Ever seen a big fire in person?

[SarahD]

They're becoming more common, so you'll probably get the opportunity. It's something to see, with flames a hundred feet high and the aircraft zooming around, dropping orange stuff like mosquitoes pissing in a hurricane.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/03/climate/texas-wildfires-climate-change/index.html

[niyad]

1. Yes, I have. Several times.

[AllaN01Bear]

2. when i was in la and also living in sonora ca , we had a wilderness interface . we got to see the retardent

planes and the buldosers along with the hand crews and base camps . my jr high was used as a base camp extensivly and for staging. got to see the equipment up close .

[riversedge]

3. I hope I never will see a fire like that. So much loss.

[WhiteTara]

4. I was fire fighting when I was about 12 or so

and got encircled by the fire. It was terrifying, but obviously, I found the way out. My last big fire was in northern CA and the fire line was about a mile away. The smoke was horrifying.

[True Dough]

5. And this is happening in early March

The summer promises to be blazing!

[WheelWalker]

6. I have fought them, many many times.

Up close and personal, from initial attack to mop up and everything in between. I've called in air assets and built hotline in the wilderness. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, as we would say. I Knew by the Yellowstone fires of 1988 that it was time to find another line of work

[niyad]

10. I hope you chose something at least a tad less dangerous.

[WheelWalker]

11. Less dangerous, yes. Yet more stressful.

Civil litigation.

[MontanaMama]

7. Yep. I live in Montana and massive wildfires

are a regular part of our reality now.

[Murfdog]

8. The earth shook

I’ve seen wildfire, too close. Well in the lead of firefighters racing up an Idaho mountainside to build a fire line , on foot , I suddenly and unexpectedly came upon another fire crew working in a forested alpine basin at the base of a scree slope. Standing a moment to catch my breath, in the course of maybe two minutes max, the ambient smoke increased exponentially, couldn’t see 50 ft then in the span of moments all the smoke settled around my feet, the forest canopy above the crew in the cirque spontaneously combusted, then ground began to shake and the fabled and hard to believe freight train roar came up the mountain. Holy shit. We all escaped, somehow.

[niyad]

9. How utterly, incredibly, frightening. So glad you all escaped.