Topography

Transcript

STUART ANDERSON

Topography, with rural fires being out in the open on the landscape, it does have a major impact. There’s a number of different parts of topography or terrain that are important, slope being a really critical one. And the reason why slope is so important is that it allows fires to burn and spread faster. Other factors related to terrain are the likes of ridgelines and tops of hills where fires can race up to and then they can either throw embers over the ridgeline onto the other side. You also have things like the wind starting to interact with terrain, so eddying and swirling of winds in hill country, which again makes fire a little bit more unpredictable and a little bit more dangerous as well.