WatchBasics of wildfire tactics
Line, fire, escape, and air
This page is written for firefighters around the world who do not have access to US fire training aids. These are the core tactics of wildland firefighting, explained the way they are taught on the fireline, with links to official US resources so you can keep learning from the source.
First subsection
Line Construction
Fireline (also called handline or control line) is a strip of land cleared of burnable fuel down to mineral soil, cut around a fire to rob it of fuel and stop its spread. Crews cut line with hand tools (Pulaskis, McLeods, shovels) or machines, choosing the route the same way a chess player chooses a move: along ridges, roads, creeks and other anchors, taking the fire where the ground is good and the fuels are light. There are three ways a crew can be worked along the line, and every firefighter should be able to recognize all three from the sound of a crew working.
Progressive
The crew starts at one end of the line and keeps working forward together, finishing as they go. It is the default method when the line is in good ground and the fire is not threatening the work.
Why and when: Fast, simple, and keeps everyone working together under close supervision. Used on most initial attack lines and in moderate terrain.
Leapfrog
The crew is split into squads. Each squad builds a section of line, then "leapfrogs" past the others to open the next section ahead, leaving the finishing to the following squads.
Why and when: Used when a critical piece of line must be opened quickly to catch an active edge or reach a threatened point. It is harder to supervise, so it demands experienced crew leaders.
Scratch
A hasty, minimal line scratched out with hand tools, only wide enough to check fire when there is no time for a proper line. It is often widened or rebuilt later if the fire allows.
Why and when: Used for immediate protection: right at the heel of the fire, around a structure, or to catch a spot fire before it grows. Speed matters more than quality.
Second subsection
Ignitions
Firing is deliberately setting fire to fuels inside or ahead of a wildfire to remove fuel from its path, strengthen a control line, or steer the fire where you want it. The person lighting is the igniter; the area already burned behind them is black, and the whole operation depends on holding the ignition intensity low enough that it never escapes the line. A firing operation is a fire in itself: it needs an anchor point, a plan, a lookout and an escape route just like any other fire. These are the classic firing patterns every firefighter should recognize.
Strip firing
Igniters light a series of narrow strips, usually walking into the wind or downslope, letting each strip back onto the previous one before lighting the next. The fire of each strip stays small and manageable.
Why and when: The workhorse of prescribed and backfiring operations. Used when you need steady, controlled progress over a large area with a small crew and simple lighting.
Chevron (V) firing
Strips are lit in a V or arrowhead shape, often starting at a road or anchor point, with the point of the V into the wind. Fire creeps along the arms and burns out the middle gradually.
Why and when: Used on slopes and along drainages where you want to pull heat away from the line and keep the flame front from running at the control line all at once.
Dot (spot) firing
Individual spots of fire are set in a grid or scattered pattern and allowed to spread into each other. Each dot stays small, so total heat released at any moment is low.
Why and when: Used under marginal weather, in heavy fuels, or close to the fire edge, where continuous lines of fire would be too intense. Slow but very safe.
Ring firing
The perimeter of the area is lit all at once, or lit from the downwind side and closed around, so the whole block burns inward.
Why and when: Used only on smaller, well-contained units with crews and engines in reserve, because all the heat is produced at once. Common for quick burns of slash piles and small grass units.
Flank (parallel) firing
Ignition starts at the head anchor and works down one or both flanks, setting fire parallel to the wind direction so it backs and spreads sideways at the same time.
Why and when: Used to secure a fire flank quickly with a moderate intensity, often with engine support. Faster than strip firing but needs close timing.
Blacklining
Burning a strip wide enough that it cannot be jumped by the main fire, then using that blackened strip as a secure control line from which to burn further.
Why and when: Used on big backfires and prescribed burns where the main fire is close and a bare line alone would not hold. The blackened ground becomes your safety margin.
Third subsection
Escape Routes and Safety Zones
An escape route is the path you take to reach a safety zone, and a safety zone is the place you survive once you get there. Together they are the last line of defense for every firefighter, and they are only real if they are planned before you need them. These are the rules I mentor firefighters with. Learn them before the smoke, because on a bad afternoon nobody has time to teach.
- 1Always know two ways out. Escape routes are useless if there is only one and it gets cut off.
- 2Escape routes must be scouted on foot, timed, and cleared. Estimate travel time at a walking pace with a pack, not at a sprint in daylight.
- 3Safety zones are areas with no burnable fuel: already burned ground, bare rock, wide roads or water. Grass or sparse scrub between you and the fire is not a safety zone.
- 4Size safety zones for the worst fire you can expect, not the fire you can see. The bigger and faster the fire, the bigger the zone you need.
- 5Where you put the safety zone matters: uphill and downwind of the fire is where you do not want to be when it makes its run.
- 6Re-evaluate constantly. Escape routes and safety zones that were good this morning may be gone after the wind changes or the fire moves.
- 7Never let yourself get into a position where the fire, a slope, or a drainage has the advantage of you. Back out early; there is no shame in disengaging.
- 8Post lookouts, keep communications open, and make sure everyone on the line can answer: where is my escape route, where is my safety zone, who is my lookout?
Worth reading next: the International Association of Wildland Fire article Common Denominators on Tragedy Fires, Updated for a New (Human) Fire Environment. It revisits the classic list of four fire-behavior common denominators that repeat on fatal fires (small or deceptively quiet fires, light fuels, unexpected wind shifts, and fire running uphill with the wind aligned to slope), then adds Dick Mangan’s modern factors (aviation, driving, health, falling hazards) and argues that the missing half of the picture is us: human factors like experience levels, the mid-afternoon hours when most burnovers happen, and wearing too many hats on the line. Read it with your crew and talk it through.
Fourth subsection
Mop Up
Mop up is the work you do after the fire edge is lined and burned out: making the line cold and keeping it cold. It matters because a fire is not controlled until every hot ember, smoldering root and burning stump inside the perimeter is dead out. More fires have escaped days after they were “contained” than on the first afternoon: a single glowing root that burns under the line overnight, a rolling log across the fireline, or a wind change finding an unburned pocket is all it takes to lose the whole piece of ground you fought for. Mop up is also most of the fire’s life. The run gets the headlines; the mop up is where the fire is actually won, and where tired crews let their guard down. Treat it as a learning discipline, not an afterthought.
There are two broad families. Dry mop up uses hand tools: stirring, scraping, trenching around hot logs, rolling burning material back inside the black, and digging out roots and stumps along the line. Wet mop up adds water and foam from engines, bladders and hose lays to cool hot material quickly. On big fires both are used together. These are the classic mop-up methods every firefighter should be able to name and do:
Cold trailing (hand trail)
Working the fire edge on foot, feeling the ground with the back of your bare hand for heat you cannot see, then digging out everything that is still hot until you can walk the whole edge bare-handed. Everything hot is stirred, scraped and drowned.
Why and when: The most thorough way to secure a line, especially in duff, peat and deep litter where heat hides below the surface. Slow, sweaty and boring, which is exactly why it works and why it is skipped at your peril.
Blacklining
Burning out any unburned fuel left inside the fire edge and inside the line, so the whole strip between fire and line is black and cold instead of green and waiting. Any island or pocket of unburned fuel inside the perimeter is torched or cut off.
Why and when: An unburned pocket inside the line is an escape waiting for a wind change. Blacklining removes it, and gives you a wide, secure strip that spot fire cannot jump easily.
Hot spotting and patrol
After the edge is cold, crews walk the line and the interior on a set schedule, hunting for smokes, hot roots that fire has tunneled along, and holdover fire in logs, stumps and caches, and knocking them down.
Why and when: Holdover fire can smolder underground or inside a log for days and restart the fire far from where anyone is watching. Regular patrol is how you find it before the wind does.
The 100-foot standard
A common working standard on US fires: mop up 100 feet inside the control line, killing every ember, smolder and heat source in that band, widening it where fuels or wind make the risk worse.
Why and when: It turns "the line looks good" into a measurable standard everyone on the fire can understand. Distance is adjusted for fuel, slope and weather, but the idea is always the same: make the black next to your line genuinely cold.
Fifth subsection
Fire Aviation: Airtanker Tactics
Airtankers fight fire by dropping water or, more often, long-term fire retardant ahead of the fire edge. Retardant does not put fire out: it coats the fuel, changing its chemistry so it will not carry fire, which buys the ground crews time to get a line in. Drops are either direct (onto or right beside the fire edge to cool and slow it) or indirect (a retardant line built ahead of the fire in unburned fuel, which the crews then use as an anchor). A lead plane or an aerial supervisor flies ahead of the tanker, talks to the ground forces, marks the drop line with smoke, and clears the airspace. Drop height, speed and the coverage level (how much retardant per unit area, from level 1 light to level 10 heavy) are all chosen for the fuel type and what the drop has to do.
The rule that saves lives: aircraft support ground forces, they do not replace them. A drop only holds until the line is in, and if crews are not there to take advantage of it, the retardant is wasted.
Last section
Fire Aviation: Helicopter Tactics
Helicopters are the precision tools of fire aviation. Where an airtanker drops a long retardant line, a helicopter works close to the crews: making repeated accurate bucket drops on hot spots, spot fires and flare-ups along the line. Buckets carried under the ship are filled by dipping into lakes, rivers and ponds (a dip site), or by hover filling from a bucket, while helicopters fitted with tanks refill through a snorkel hose from a portable tank or water source without landing. Some carry fixed tanks for foam or gel drops directly on structures.
Helicopters also move the fight itself: helitack crews are ferried to remote ridges and canyon heads to open helispots (small landing sites on the fire), set up dip sites and communication relays, and ferry firefighters and cargo by longline and rappel. That is where I spent much of my career: the helicopter gets the first people and the first water onto a new fire faster than any crew can walk in, and initial attack success depends on it. Watch the communication too: every helicopter on a fire works a traffic pattern around the helibase and helispots, and everyone on the ground needs to know how to approach and load a ship safely.