Whenever there is a brush fire or forest fire that covers a large amount of territory, how do they determine how many acres have already been burned and how do they determine how much of the fire is actually contained at any given point?

Asked by Bluefreedom (22947

) December 21st, 2008

I live in Arizona where we have had several large brush fires over the years and the news anchors will say something like “The fire has charred 463 acres and is 34 percent contained at this point.”

How can they accurately measure the acreage and how do they figure out the containment percentage? Would it all be guessing by the professionals or do they have an actual formula they employ to find their answers? Anyone have any facts or theories about how firefighters find these answers?

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3 Answers

As far as “total acres burned” I’d assume it’s done via satellite imagery or by simple plane flyovers. For percentage contained, it’s probably done the same way. They can say certain fires are contained by some criteria. If you overlay an acreage grid on the map, you can figure out roughly how many acres are burned, and roughly how much is contained. Then you can figure out a percentage contained amount / total burning = percent.

Perchik (4997

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