Wildfires are a very nasty natural disaster– not that any of them are good. They are deadly, move fast and are unpredictable. We had one here in East TN a few years ago that killed 14, hurt many more and destroyed a number of residences. I recently drove through the area and in most places, you can’t even see there was a fire, because it moved so fast it didn’t burn the trees, just the undergrowth. And man-made residences.

Drought is a precondition for wildfires but they can occur almost any time. When we lived in Colorado we could sometimes see the smoke from wildfires in the foothills. We also saw when they would set preventative fires. There were also areas that had burned many years earlier and there, the tree had been burned and the land was still scorched.

Here is a free downloadable slideshow on wildfires. I’ve got a bunch of these free slideshows on various survival topics (as well as history, New York City, writing and more) on my Slideshows page. Feel free to take a look.