Fires in rural areas and small towns can be just as devastating as fires in the city, but there are some important differences in how they are fought. Fires in remote areas can quickly become wildfires in the right (wrong?) conditions and present a different set of challenges. It’s helpful to understand the differences in order to base your own fire preparations on real conditions.
Nature of Urban Fires
Despite what we see on TV news and in the movies, large urban fires are not only considerably less frequent than large rural fires, but they also claim fewer lives. They are still very dangerous and have their own unique set of challenges.
- Changing demographics in cities, such as growing numbers of older adults, people with disabilities, immigrants, and people living in poverty may impact fire safety and complicate evacuation efforts.
- Firefighters generally are on offense. They approach the fire aggressively and attack it directly at the root.
- Urban situations generally involve closed compartment situations, often where there is no ventilation. This concentrates the fire but can also help contain the spread. Several firefighting techniques are most effective in closed compartment fires like high-rise buildings and where there is no wind.
- Structure fires in urban situations permit fire control strategies based on ventilation.
- Heavy duty equipment used in urban situations provides significant protection against high heat, flames, falling debris.
- Masks and respirators are used in urban fires, which permits relatively close involvement while fighting fires.
- Water is plentiful and multiple stations may respond to a single fire, so manpower and equipment are typically not issues.
- Since urban environments have large expanses of pavement and concrete, fires are not as likely to spread and burn out of control. This allows fire departments to focus on saving individual buildings and private property.
Nature of Rural Firefighting
While fires in rural areas usually start from electric problems or a heater placed too close to the curtains, the challenges associated with fire support mean even a small accident can lead to devastating damage.
Starting off, rural fires are much more prone to spreading than urban fires, simply from the nature of rural living. Natural areas adjacent to structures may include fallen trees and years’ worth of dried leaves that make readily combustible fuel. It’s common for even small fires to spread to adjacent wooded areas and fields.
Once a fire has been identified and reported, response time is a frequent challenge in rural situations, since fire districts may span 80 square miles or more. Adding to the issue, rural fire departments may need to request additional equipment from distant areas and volunteer departments may struggle to staff fires with well trained, experienced personnel. These longer response times mean fires burn longer, structures are more highly involved, and damage is much more significant.
Once firefighters arrive, steep, narrow roads and driveways as well as unplowed snow hinder equipment access. If there’s not enough room to turn a fire engine around in the driveway, for example, it must stay on the road and firefighters may end up hand pulling fire hoses.
Firetrucks can provide limited water that may extinguish a small fire, but in larger fires the need to travel distances to refill from distant hydrants could slow efforts enough to result in real tragedy. Lack of nearby water supplies significantly increase the danger of total structure losses as well as enable spread to other structures such as ranches, barns, and nearby residences.
Since hydrants can be too distant to be practical, rural fires are often fought using draft sources such as nearby ponds or lakes, which means fire departments must figure out how to move that water with their own resources. Fortunately, fire departments are permitted to draft from any accessible water source so long as the water is deep enough that the suction doesn't pull debris into the pump. They key to saving your home and barn, then, may boil down to whether there’s enough accessible, pumpable water nearby.
Nature of a Wildfire
Wildfire operations are so unique that even the firefighters who fight them have their own name: wildland firefighters. Wildland fires are dangerous and deadly, just like urban fires, but they present a different set of challenges and require different tactics for managing and fighting.
Wildland teams operate on a defensive approach. Since wildfires can spread rapidly and are often difficult to contain, the first priority in a wildfire is to establish a defensive perimeter and contain the spread. This means that wildland firefighters are trained to prioritize resources over homes and other private property. They won’t spend time worrying about your home or ranch at the cost of allowing a wildfire to spread uncontrolled.
Wildfires can be exceptionally unpredictable and dangerous, and yet wildland firefighters are essentially on their own. There’s nowhere to hide from the fire, no quick-fire exit, no window to climb out of, and even rescue operations may be impossible. Accordingly, a wildland fighter’s mantra is “take it slow and careful,” since they have few options for escape if things go badly.
Even personal protection for wildland firefighters is much lighter than what’s used in urban operations. Designed to be worn for extended periods of time (12 hours and more), the helmets and coats are substantially lighter and don’t provide the same degree of protection against heat and direct flames. Wildland firefighters typically aren’t equipped with masks or heavy respirators, so they have no choice but to retreat from direct smoke and flame.
The Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) is the zone where wilderness transitions to developed land and the environments intermingle. Settlements in the WUI are at greater risk of catastrophic wildfires, so some communities have adopted a code intended to allow them to withstand wildfire exposure even in the absence of fire department intervention. The WUI code focuses on establishing defensible spaces, adequate water supplies and good planning as part of a coordinated system to guard homes from wildfire.
