1988 Yellowstone Fire Map
The yellowstone fires of 1988.
1988 yellowstone fire map. The flames scorched about 1 2 million acres across the area leaving the impression that the world s. The spring of 1988 was wet until the month of june when. The lightning bolt started a small forest fire which became known as the fan fire. The new york times revisited the yellowstone fires of 1988 in a 12 minute documentary below.
In june of 1988 park managers and fire behavior specialists allowed 18 lightning caused fires to burn after evaluating them according to the fire management plan. Still due to continued dry conditions on july 21st the decision was made to suppress all fires. More than 25 000 firefighters cycled through the park combating 50 wildfires seven of which became major wildfires. Eleven of these fires burned themselves out behaving like many fires had in previous years.
11 1988 almost exactly three months after the first fire began burning in yellowstone national park rain and snow began to fall. The facts are that due to a transformation of wild land fire suppression attitudes which went from putting out all fires dating back to the 1930 s to letting them. The yellowstone fires of 1988 collectively formed the largest wildfire in the recorded history of yellowstone national park in the united states. By july 15th only 18 307 acres had burned in the entire greater yellowstone area fire growth maps yellowstone national park 1988.
These fires were historical for several reasons. State regional photos. By the time the first snowfall extinguished the last flames in september 793 000 of the park s 2 221 800 acres had burned. Starting as many smaller individual fires the flames quickly spread out of control due to drought conditions and increasing winds combining into one large conflagration which burned for several months.
The summer of 1988 turned out to be the driest in the park s recorded history. Controversially however no serious effort was made to completely extinguish the fires and they burned until the arrival of autumn rains the problem is mainly the wording. The fires almost destroyed two major visitor destinations and on september 8 1988 the entire park closed to all non emergency personnel for the. Scenes from the yellowstone.
First they burned over 30 percent of the total acreage of the park and second they marked a significant shift in the way yellowstone fought fires. Not to continue nit picking but i fought the forest fires for over 5 weeks in 1988 and i am concerned about the following sentence. The yellowstone fires of 1988 have been described as being instrumental in the public s understanding of the role of fire in ecosystems history making and career building. On june 30 1988 lightning struck a tree in the crown butte region of yellowstone national park in the park s far northwest corner near where the borders of idaho montana and wyoming meet.