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A firestorm is usually a natural phenomenon, created during forest fires. A firestorm combines fire with the mass movement of air to create a fire of extreme intensity over a wide area. Some of the largest forest fires like the Great Peshtigo Fire have been firestorms.
After an area catches fire, the air above the area becomes extremely hot and rises rapidly. Cold air then rushes in at ground level from the outside, creating high winds which fan the flames at ground level further. This creates a self-sustaining 'firestorm' with temperatures peaking at over 2000 degrees C.
Experiments with test fires have shown that firestorms can create fast-moving vortices of fire, which can spread the fire beyond the area of the original fire. The winds in some of these fire vortices can reach tornadic strengths, effectively creating a "fire tornado." These fiery tornadoes can complicate the jobs of firefighters in combating the inferno.
An extremely large firestorm can even create its own weather system, drawing air inward and creating thunderstorm like weather which tends to aid the spread of the flames.
The same underlying combustion physics can also apply to man-made structures such as cities.
Firestorms are thought to have been part of the mechanism of large urban fires such as the Great Chicago Fire, Great Fire of Rome, the Great Fire of London, and the 1906 San Francisco Fire .
Firestorms were also created by the firebombing raids of World War II in Hamburg (see: Operation Gomorrah), Dresden (see: bombing of Dresden in World War II), TokyoTokyo (; Tokyo lit. eastern capital) is the capital of Japan as well as the most populous conurbation in Japan, and the world's largest metropolitan area by population with 33,750,000 people living within its urban influence. A little more than 12 million (see: bombing of Tokyo in World War IIDuring World War II the strategic bombing of targets without direct military value became a common policy. As capital of Japan, Tokyo was an obvious target as part of an assault on the "basic economic and social fabric of the country". The first raid on T), KasselKassel [ˈkasl̩] (until 1926 officially Cassel) is a city on the Fulda River in the north of the state of Hesse in western-central Germany. Kassel is the capital of the Kassel administrative region Regierungsbezirk and of the district of the (see: bombing of Kassel in World War IIThe city of Kassel in Germany was severely bombed during World War II. Kassel is in the northern part of the federal state of Hesse, between Frankfurt (190 km south), and Hanover (160 km north). In the early 1940s it was the capital of the Prussian provin), DarmstadtDarmstadt is a city in the Bundesland (federal state) of Hesse in Germany. Its population is estimated (2003) at 137,900. The city is located to the south of the conjoined metropolitan areas of Frankfurt and Wiesbaden. History Darmstadt was first mentione, and StuttgartStuttgart is the capital of Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany and has about 600,000 inhabitants June 2004 . Overview Stuttgart Germany, capital of Baden-Wurttemberg state (pop. 11 million, 36,000 square kilometers) and the Administrative District of Stuttgart (p.
The fire-bombing consisted of dropping large amounts of high explosives to expose the timbers within buildings, followed by incendiary deviceAn incendiary device is a device or weapon designed to create a fire. See also Incendiary weapons flamethrower napalm Molotov cocktail Greek fire fuel-air explosive arson accelerant Incendiary weapons.s (fire-sticks) to ignite them and then more high explosives to hamper the efforts of the fire services. It is said that, in the Dresden firebombing people literally melted and caught fire in the resulting furnace conditions.
Nuclear weapons are also very likely to create firestorms in urban areas. This was responsible for a large portion of the destruction at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.| Politics | Business | Finance |
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