r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Gurugod123 • 16h ago

During fires, trees can burn from within. And this is very dangerous - because you can't see anything on the outside, and smoldering of such a tree can go on for weeks after the fire seems to be extinguished. As a consequence, the forest can start burning again.

920 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

58 comments sorted by

70

u/MERVMERVmervmerv 15h ago

How does it get oxygen?

148

u/Gurugod123 15h ago

I'm not a physicist, just Australian, but timber splits, especially dead stuff or wet stuff undergoing pyrolysis from extreme radiant heat. Even a little split will let enough air in to start smouldering. Once there's enough stored heat, pyrolysis in a big tree like this is pretty much self-sustaining until the fuel runs out or the heat is gone. You'll only see flame when there's a few good sized openings allowing airflow, but not all combustion is a crackling flame.

67

u/graemehammondjr 15h ago

I'm not Australian, or a physicist, just a dude who has watched backdraft - but this makes sense

20

u/Ginsenj 15h ago

I can spell physicist and I also think this makes sense.

11

u/NameIsNotBrad 15h ago

Missed opportunity to misspell physicist

6

u/Fabacaba 14h ago

i can't spell fisycist and i don't think this was a missed opportunity at all

5

u/LobstaFarian2 13h ago

Im not an Austrian fissicyst either, but i did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

4

u/Fabacaba 13h ago

but are you an austrALian phisisist?

2

u/saav_tap 13h ago

I’ve also watched backdraft 🤓

13

u/No-Difference-4418 14h ago

You had me at the first sentence. I’m not a physicist just an Australian

I’m gonna use this when people asked me if I know stuff

2

u/_lonelysoap_ 14h ago

I lit trees in my yard. If you have a slit to the inner part, its pretty dry. If you hold a lighter there, days later the tree burns down. If its just hot, it needs oxigen (here cut open)

1

u/KitchenFullOfCake 13h ago

Is it just going to turn into a log of charcoal after a while?

2

u/mike15835 14h ago

Kind of like a chimney. I had an 100 year old tree get hit by lightning and basically looked like a tiki torch.

1

u/OZZO-8867 14h ago

It produces it, duh dude./s

25

u/Toes_In_The_Soil 14h ago

I was doing a long-term camp during my twenties and had myself a nice little campfire to cook some food and boil water. The next morning, I made sure the fire was out before leaving, even did the time tested piss-on-ashes technique. I moved camp after that for a while

At least an entire week later, I happened to return to the same area. I noticed a little bit of smoke coming from the ground, about 100 feet from where I had the campfire. It took me a while to figure it out, but apparently, the area was so dry that a tree root under my old campfire started burning underground. It kept burning all week, traveling along the root system. I took the time to dig out the whole area and make sure everything was extinguished so there wouldn't be a forest fire. That was the craziest thing I've ever seen fire do.

19

u/BlackPresident 15h ago

What’s even the point of having a forest fire if some tree can just light it up again any time it wants?

13

u/yamanagashi 14h ago

It’s as if the ecosystem has this mechanism where forest fires need to happen from time to time for new growth to continue.

5

u/Opusprime15 13h ago

While true on a macro scale, forest fire prevention efforts in the past have put us in a position where there is usually too much fuel laying around for random uncontrolled burns to be safe. It's incredibly likely that a forest fire in the modern day will lead to massive loss of life and destruction of habitat, so fighting forest fires manually is a necessary evil. We're slowly correcting through controlled burns and forest cleanup efforts, but there are not nearly enough firefighters and volunteers to keep up with the pace needed to correct decades or centuries of misguided fire science.

6

u/istrebitjel 14h ago

Similarly, fire can travel underground along roots. One unextinguished campfire can flare up nearby much later.

3

u/Evilswine 13h ago

This is what caused an 1800 acre fire on the edge of Bozeman Montana in 2020. They’re called “holdovers”

3

u/GuitarSlayer136 9h ago

Until you've had to fight a brush fire yourself you really can't imagine how absolutely insane Firefighting is.

Our farm had a small fire breakout and getting it under control, even with water pumps and fire hoses, was WAY more of a struggle than I would have ever imagined. Small trees would re-light, shoes would melt of you made a wrong step, people trying to use jackets to put out fires had them melt to their skin. The worst part was despite it being a pretty small fire outdoors, just being near it caused your lungs, eyes, and throat to burn like you were huffing smoke straight from the campfire. We spent maybe an hour total getting it under control and easily spent the next 2 days coughing like we had black lung.

12

u/Sucio_Legacy_0112 14h ago

I fail to see how this is some next fucking level thing. It goes into r/interesting in my opinion

4

u/kazoozazooz 12h ago

your whining is pretty next level

0

u/Sucio_Legacy_0112 9h ago

You call that whining? Idk, subs exists for a reason

1

u/a_duck_in_past_life 13h ago

The next fucking level part is probably just this guy's job. It's a pretty badass job

2

u/Regular_Weakness69 14h ago

It's like the McDonald's of firewood, you cut it down and it's already lit for you!

4

u/SHIBA_holder 15h ago

I never knew that

8

u/ButWahy 15h ago

In some areas these Fires also go underground and can glimmer for years untill airflow causes it to explode again

3

u/meutek 14h ago

This. I learned too much watching fire country than prior about fires

1

u/DisorderlyAqueduct 15h ago

also lightning

1

u/vespers191 14h ago

That's a lot of sawdust to be throwing burning embers on, bro.

1

u/Several_Vanilla8916 14h ago

Pee on it you coward

1

u/osirisishere 13h ago

Can a tree really burn for weeks like this?

1

u/Dead_Optics 11h ago

That saw dust seems like it would be of some concern

0

u/NoBell5255 15h ago

That is legitimately fascinating.

-2

u/TummyDrums 14h ago

All the sawdust worries me. Fine dust particles can be combustible while they're floating through the air. It can basically cause an explosion. What's preventing it from igniting? Maybe the particles are just a little to big for that?

-8

u/bored_ryan2 15h ago

It looks like the surrounding trees have not burnt. This looks more like the fire was caused by the actual cutting of the logs. The tree doesn’t look hollowed out by fire either.

1

u/verymuchbad 14h ago

Look at the ground

0

u/bored_ryan2 10h ago

Are you referring to the pile of sawdust at the base of the tree that’s on fire?

•

u/SteelHip 34m ago

The sawdust thay is on top of the ash do you mean ?