Surrounded by Fire | National Geographic

this all takes place in Canada’s
Northwest Territories there’s a section
of forest there that has been designated
to do crown fire experiments
there’s lots of thick dense lodgepole
pine and they will set it afire with a
flamethrower and they’re spraying this
flammable liquid into the trees the
whole goal is to light one-half of a
test plot with as much fire as quickly
as they can so that it will get up into
the top of the trees and just run right
through the forest here’s the view from
one of our fire cameras so it’s this
kind of idyllic setting here you’re in
the forest what you can’t see is the
fire that’s coming behind us and it’s
setting up such a big dark smoke column
that it actually blocks out the Sun and
makes it look like night for a moment
and at the same time there are embers
landing creating those little spot fires
here and there and that’s how fire
spreads even crown fire it jumps out
ahead of itself by starting these small
little fires and the main flaming front
is coming from behind and you can see
how windy it gets that’s when that the
fire column is making just through
convection so there’s so much heat goes
up so quickly air has to come in and
replace it so that’s what that wind is
here you can see the fire this is not
speeded up it’s in real time and you can
see how quickly it just burns everything
up and how different the landscape looks
the most compelling thing about fire is
that you’re seeing this one of nature’s
fiercest forces up close when you see
this force of nature just tearing
through the forest you feel really small
and insignificant and at the same time
you feel like you’re getting a real
close-up glimpse of something that’s
been going on for millions of years
you