An escape fire is a fire lit to clear an area of vegetation in the face of an approaching wildfire when no escape exists. Unlike backfires, escape fires are not attempts to control – let alone stop – a wildfire. Like a backfire, it works by depriving an approaching primary fire of fuel so that when the primary fire reaches where the escape fire started the primary fire cannot continue; there is nothing there to burn.
The technique had been described in James Fenimore Cooper's 1827 novel The Prairie but became well-known only after the Mann Gulch fire. On this occasion, (Robert) Wagner "Wag" Dodge came up with the same idea independently, and successfully put it into practice. He cleared an area large enough for him to survive unharmed when the main fire was less than one minute away.
Escape fires are an option in grassland but do not work in forest fires because timber burns too slowly to consume the fuel before the main fire arrives.
Approximately 40-percent of all wildfire deaths are caused by fire entrapments, or what are sometimes called burnovers.
Famous quotes containing the words escape and/or fire:
“If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Hm, the beacon of the press. In the hell to which all journalists must descend when they die, Mr. Wiggam, we shall sit at red hot desks with quills of fire in our hand and spend eternity on eternity writing about the salubrious weather of that region. Let us serve our apprenticeship here thoroughly and intelligently.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)