
Air tanker — A fixed-wing aircraft fitted with tanks and equipment for dropping suppressants or retardants on wildfires.
Campaign Fire — A wildfire of such size, complexity and/or priority that its extinction requires a large organization, high resource commitment, significant expenditure, and prolonged suppression activity. (Synonym: Project Fire.)
Control a Fire — To complete a control line around a fire, any spot fires therefrom, and any interior island(s) to be saved; cooling down all hot spots that are immediate threats to the control line until the lines can be expected to hold under foreseeable conditions. (Stages of Control: see fire status.)
Control Line — A comprehensive term for all constructed or natural fire barriers and treated fire perimeter used to control a fire. (See Fireguard and Fireline.)
Fine Fuels — Fuels that ignite readily and are consumed rapidly by fire (e.g., cured grass, fallen leaves, needles, small twigs). Dead fine fuels also dry very quickly. (Synonym: Flash Fuels. Note Medium Fuels and Heavy Fuels.)
Fire Ban — A Ministerial Order issued by the provincial government to restrict the use of fire in areas of high hazard. The order describes what types of fires are allowed or may in fact entirely prohibit the use of any fire.
Fire Behaviour — The manner in which fuel ignites, flame develops, and fire spreads and exhibits other related phenomena as determined by the interaction of fuels, weather, and topography.
Some common terms used to describe fire behaviour include the following:
Fire Danger — A general term used to express an assessment of both fixed and variable factors of the fire environment that determine the ease of ignition, rate of spread, difficulty of control, and fire impact. (Note Fire Hazard, Fire Risk, and Burning Conditions.)
Fireguard — A strategically planned barrier, either manually or mechanically constructed, intended to stop or retard the rate of spread of a fire, and from which suppression action is carried out to control a fire. The constructed portion of a control line.
Fire Hand Tools — The principle hand tools used in wildf re suppression are:
Fire Status:
Fire Suppression Tactics — Determine exactly where to establish control lines, what to do along these lines, and how best to use each firefighting resource group to cope with site-specific conditions and fire behaviour at the moment. This is a line function.
Hot Spot — Defined as follows:
Incident Management Team — The Incident Commander and all incident operations at the incident site.
Initial Attack — The action taken to halt the spread or potential spread of a wildfire by the first firefighting force to arrive at the wildfire.
Infrared Scanner — An optical-electronic system for identifying or obtaining imagery of thermal infrared radiation to detect non-smoking wildfires or wildfire parameters through smoke. May also be used for mapping. The systems may be operated from an air craft or hand held unit.
Initial Attack Crew — Personnel trained, equipped and deployed to conduct suppression action to halt the spread or potential spread of a wildfire with in the first burning period. (Before 10:00 a.m. the next day).
Sustained Action Crew — Personnel trained, equipped and deployed to conduct suppression action on a wildfire for an extended period of time.
Rate of Spread (ROS) — The speed at which a wildfire extends its horizontal dimensions, expressed in terms of distance per unit of time. Generally thought of in terms of a wildfire's forward movement or head fire rate of spread, but also applicable to backfire and flank fire rate of spread.
Slash — Debris left as a result of forest and other vegetation being altered by forestry practices and other land use activities (e.g., timber harvesting thinning and pruning, road construction). Includes material such as logs, splinters or chips, tree branches and tops, uprooted stumps and broken or uprooted trees and shrubs.
Snag — A standing dead tree or part of a dead tree from which at least the smaller branches have fallen. (Synonym: chicot.)
Values at Risk — The specific or collective set of natural resources and human-made improvements/developments that have measurable or intrinsic worth and that could or may be destroyed or otherwise altered by wildfire in any given area (e.g., structures, logging, etc.)
Woods Closure — An area in which specified activities or entry are temporarily restricted by agency legislation to reduce risk of human-caused fire. An official order by a designated authority to close a specified forest area.
Forest Fire — Any wildfire that is burning in forested areas, grass or barren. (See Spot Fire.)
The main types of forest fire are: