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Below are definitions of important fire terms.

• backdraft: inside buildings, when the oxygen in a room is almost used up, the fire begins to die down from lack of the substance; the flames lower and the room fills with smoke; but if you open the door to the room at that time, the fire sucks oxygen in so hard that fire gases explode
• bush: open forest land
• conflagration: when a fire burns a large area, sometimes an entire town
• fireline: a strip of land from which all brush and debris have been cleared to rob a wildfire of its fuel
• firestorm: huge fires caused by enormous numbers of separate fires all burning together
• flashover: when burning objects heat walls and other objects in an enclosed area to their ignition temperature, causing them to flame; marked by large increase in flame volume and a sudden, marked rise in gas temperature
• flash point: the temperature at which something ignites
• pulaski: a combination ax and hoe, used to dig a fireline
• wildfires: a fire that occurs near shrub, grass, forests, or other natural areas with low human population densities.

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