Posted by Ranger Sally (165.83.4.119) on September 11, 2002 at 15:43:22:
In Reply to: fire ecology posted by there is two of us eli and jake on September 11, 2002 at 14:39:03:
: what is the greates acregs a fires gone
Thanks for your question, Eli and Jake-I'm afraid I don't know the larget fire in history, but I can tell you something about the size of the Yellowstone fires of 1988:
A total of 248 fires started in the Greater Yellowstone Area in 1988; 50 of those were in Yellowstone National Park. Despite widespread misconceptions that all fires were initially allowed to burn, only 31 of the total were; 28 of these began inside the park. In the end, 7 major fires were responsible for more than 95% of the burned acreage. Five of those fires were ignited outside the park, and 3 of them were human-caused fires that firefighters attempted to control from the beginning. The largest fire that burned into Yellowstone National Park was started on Targhee National Forest and burned 504,025 acres. It was started by human carelessness. About 1.4 million acres burned within the Greater Yellowstone Area that summer, including 793,880 (36%) of Yellowstone National Park.