Fires have the potential to cause a lot of damage and can happen when you least expect it. The more you know about how fires start and develop, the better prepared you will be to prevent them from happening.
As a former firefighter with Western Wake Fire Rescue, Keith Sanders has a passion for giving back to his community and educating people on the importance of fire safety. Today he shares the four stages of a fire.
- Ignition – this is when all three elements of the fire triangle are present and the fire starts.
- Growth – the fire will continue to burn all of the fuel available to it and will continue to get hotter and hotter. Flashovers can happen at this stage, which is when a lot of combustibles in an enclosed space catch fire all at once, and these are extremely deadly.
- Fully Developed – this is the stage in which the fire is at its hottest and has ignited all of the available combustible material. Anyone still trapped in a building during this time is in a lot of danger at this point.
- Decay – this is the longest stage of a fire where the fire starts to die down because of a decrease in fuel or oxygen.
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