All over the world to make a fires are destroying entire towns and regions. Circle. Like a Freight Train coming torture. Case how to. Make a farmers are different they are beyond our control they are insatiable see me go what the precise since some 200 clear. Concerned. Scientists and firefighters are taking up the challenge with new methods and. Its really up to humans to figure out how to rebalance everything and we can do that its a race against time to save our habitat and our lives. In the Tropical Forest scientists have discovered yet another major impact caused by extreme wildfires. In Southeast Asia africa and the amazon the deforestation for the purpose of agriculture is responsible for an especially risky type of place fires on pete soil. In indonesia this is had terrible consequences bungling heroes works for the government he is investigating the signs of an illegal deforestation. Since 2000. 500 cases. Of. Their. Own left over from a fire and that so. Were collecting them to prove there was indeed a fire and well analyze them to determine the impact of the fire. In tunisia produces 30 percent of the worlds palm oil as demand soars so do the fires. Here a Palm Oil Company may have used slash and burn to extend their plantation. Before planting the oil palms canals are dug to drain the moist soil. This lowers the water table by up to 30 centimeters leaving the peat dry and. This burn patch is not yet another illegal far. Here an International Team of scientists is recreating the legal burns to study their consequences. We are in book one where we are going to simulate. Pete burns differently than trees for a reason. Beat. It doesnt burn with a flame. The fire can actually penetrate deep inside it goes underground the soil itself is burning its not debilitation its actually destroyed. Invisibly the fires burrow deep into the ground. Foreigners are the largest fires on earth that actually can burn away from you for very long time for weeks for months weve seen fires. In specific locations it creates holes which are a deep person goes into the whole of these appears from. The most persistent type of fire on earth because hes basis to be the most difficult to suppress. They times actually. Fires were not suppressed by these rains. Back in his lab in london guillermo is tackling an even more treacherous aspect of the peat fires. And this is our special beat that comes from. Students from. Smells like home because they. Are places. To students think like their produce. Team is the only Research Facility on the globe dedicated wholly to the study of peat fires. Carbon. Stored in the carbon for a long time. But it doesnt degrade it actually stays in the water and the deeper you go. It could be from 100 years to a 1000 years thats a very n. C. And soil that was captured a long time ago. When pete smolders generations of captured carbon are released into our atmosphere all at once. As trees or biomass grow they take carbon from the atmosphere and they release oxygen and then the fire is the opposite it only fire is the opposite of photosynthesis it actually releases the carbon into the atmosphere and it consumes the oxygen so the growing of a forest is the burning of a forest. And all the while the peat hardly looks like its burning at all. Only the high speed infrared camera captures the fire spreading outwards until all the bio mass has been consumed and the carbon released. Big musicians from upbeat fire are massive. 10. 00 to 100. 00 times larger than flaming fires. So the footprint is very very large is the elephant in the room off of carbon emissions. And this footprint is about to become even larger as the fires expand to new peak rich areas of the Tropical Forest in brazil and peru. And there is another carbon bomb ready to go off. Mega fires are also whats hacking the boreal forest rich in peat in canada alaska scandinavia the u. K. And even siberia. And the border region was found under. Reagents. The scary thing you speak of only 3 percent of the land surface at the store a lot of carbon maybe 25 percent of Global Carbon stocks so if the fires move into them you get friendly id missions area. That is leaving to Climate Change is leaving is leaving to places where the soil will be warmer and drier which then will lead to even more fires which will lead to more emissions so i was electorates a positive Feedback Mechanism between more peak fires means more big fires in the future. And if this increases Global Warming in general the number of wildfires will soar. Where will you go when your forests are no longer green but theyre black and gone where will you go to breathe deep and slow. Every time there is a mega fire a Community Faces the challenge of recovering from an encounter with the beast. Several years after the fire Fort Mcmurray is physically being rebuilt but homes recover faster than people said lets take a moment to pray for each other lets take a moment to pray for everybody who is coming to our service in front of god this morning we just take a moment before lucas has left his job as a firefighter and become a pastor today that we would do it for the sake of your kingdom and for your glory i think the rate of Alcohol Consumption and the people i work with just skyrocketed myself personally to you guys excited. As you know every day on the timeline after major disasters like this you see Domestic Violence increase you see suicides increase you see Substance Abuse increase all of those things we have seen in our city all of those things are on the rise. You know. Lucas and fellow Church Members raced funds for psychological counseling for local people and firefighters. That god. The scientists tell us that for our force to recover and to look like it did before the fire is over 200 years for us as a people who experienced it i dont think it will ever leave us. I emotionally and psychologically would be something that is part of us now as part of our story. All over the world unless we find new solutions more major fires like the beast will take their tribute from our communities. We have tampered with nature and created this crisis now its up to us to find out how we can save our habitat and our lives before it is too late. Frank crumb is a great expert on force dynamics working in switzerland. He is determined to find out which rule fire played in our forests before the age of mega fires after all fire has always been part of nature. To get started frank is headed to a former military bunker from old war to. These hidden tunnels lead to the biggest collection of tree samples in europe. Some of the samples are 14000 years old. Trees have the nice ability to preserve different information in their rings they work as an autobiography for a tree and we can see different kind of signals we can see climatic signals we can see physical influences like damages and so on and we can also see environmental conditions. These are 2 samples from 2 different regions so this one here is from a very cold region and you can see very tiny rings the vegetation period is really short and the trees are growing very very slowly and here the tree rings much bigger because the conditions are better for the tree so they have the same diameter but this tree is about 25 years old and these trees about 300 years old. Here we can see a very busy narrow rain in 2003 as a consequence of a very dry here. Another tree ring bears witness to a rock fall. This tree from southern switzerland shows several scars fire scars appear a fire scar here a fires car and here a fire scar that means the tree has survived several fire events one can really nicely see how the tree can over grow these kind of wounds that are produced by the fires. The scientists cross reference weather and climate data for an even more precise truly otto biography. Here we have an example of Ponderosa Pine from arizona with these fires scarse across the whole tree sample the last one is an 1874 than there was 150 years before so these tree has survived several fires that are recorded here this is conclusive evidence that during the revolution trees learn to live with moderate fires. Fire and the trays are adept at to each other and fires are part of the forest ecosystem. But now humans have brought destructive make a fire upon the forest and upset a delicate balance. Lets find out more about how the forest copes with a moderate fire and even benefits from it. 7 years ago this landscape burned by 55000 acres in it burned in a moderate severity in this forest is bouncing back already youve got this mountain loop and here this is the nitrogen fixer and it helps this forest to rebound it fixes atmospheric nitrogen and then it leaks it to the neighborhood after a moderate fire colorful little helpers fill up the forest and stimulate regrowth and trees like the lodgepole pine just love a good fire many species are adapted to fire but this one here is dependent upon fire to complete its life cycle its got these really cool cones every one of these cones scales is held close by a drop of resin the heat of the fire melts that resin the cones open and then the seeds can fall to the ground. A few years later you can come back and see baby seedlings the lodgepole pine failing in under the black and trees a new forest. Here wildfires are part of a cycle of renewal that. And it wouldnt have been this way if it had been a big hot mega fire you would have had the seedlings you wouldnt have had the source of plant life that developed here after the fire. Fires can help our forests bounce back with new vigor ready. We have been thinking about wild fire for a long time in the wrong way theres no way to keep it out of the ecosystem. We have to invite it back in and dance with the bass. And. The. Dancing with the enemy might save our lives. But for that we need to overcome our fear of fire. Sonja lever close a canadian fire ecologist and firefighter has come to me to people who have a completely different relationship with far. Im chief marvin youre here whats up with very 1st nations and this is the territory of blueberry personally since we have 3000. Hunting territory here. Fire is important it plays a larger role and always has been 1st nations people my dad was my. My teacher. He lived off the land he was a trapper and a hunter he taught all his boys are always need it. Explained the dangers of it as not to be played with its important. That also far can be your your friend his nose and your enemy at the same time now sonia teaches young firefighters how many indigenous tribes in both canada and the u. S. Knew all along how to use fire as a tool. Paradoxically it was the indian custom of frequent light burning that it produced and maintain much of the land of white settlers were then able to find. These open grasslands grew very attractive to the white settler. People thought this was a natural thing that happened and they were really really excited but little did they know they needed to continue applying fire to the land in order to maintain and to keep a patchwork mosaic on the land. Fire as a tool was outlawed and the tradition largely forgotten only a few tribes like chief marvins after served and. We have a birds eye view having a very are just 200 stand in a work of fire. You know. Were willing to share. Our knowledge and work with people. Sonja is updating the ancient tradition with modern science. First step preparation. In todays dense and overgrown forests a clear boundary needs to be set around the entire plot for the planned fire. Where we have black line we actually removed the fuel component of the fire triangle so when a fire approaches a black line then the fire no longer can spread because the fuel has been removed from that area. So it is t. Also as a with line to strengthen the boundary. The great moment has come when weve completed our wet line around the outside edge weve also done black lining against the wet line and if the wind condition is right and we get wind from the west the fire will roll across here it will stop against our black line. This might look like a ping pong ball but actually its filled with the tassie implementing it which gets injected with glycol and make them highly flammable that happens through this machine that i have in the helicopter with. In the. Socalled prescribed fires or controlled burns are the modern version of a traditional burn to maintain the patchwork in the forest. They are now making a comeback as an efficient Fire Prevention tool in canada and the us. And are even being introduced in europe. Helicopters make the process faster. And less risky for the firefighters and allow them to reach difficult terrain. And the fire just scratches the surface and is done in an hour. We light fires because that is also part of firefighting prescribed fire and keeps the land healthy. But there are areas where prescribed fires are a huge risk for instance right next to a community. John will brand is one of hundreds of millions of people all over the world who live in the socalled wild land urban interface. These dream homes have become deadly fire traps because humans and the forest share the same space. We were well aware that one day we might be fighting a fire to try and save our home. The race is on to find Viable Solutions to survive extreme wildfire in these areas example california. In december 2017 a spark from a faulty powerline ignited the parched and overgrown landscape a frequent cause of fire where humans want to live in nature with all the amenities. Spurred on by ferocious winds the fire soon grew into a mega fire. Place that could look out the window at night as i went to bed and i could see the fire for a couple of nights in a row as it burned closer and closer. John and his partners own cloyd decided to stay and defend their home. What i remember the most of the fire was the sound. Of the roar of the engines hence it was like a Freight Train coming towards your curiosity car truck and you were encircled by fire on at least 3 sides i took one side of the house he took the other and during the entire fire we didnt know whether the other one had survived the fire. We made it. Wrong claud annoy we made it ok or says made it the donkeys made of the cows made it. By studio did not make it. The fire found its way underneath the shipping containers and all of my archives all record of my life as an artist from when i was a teenager up until 2005 i have lost. As the blaze continues many more homes were lost to the flames. And the firefighters were karlas until the fire raced in london towards 2 fire breaks. One was a scar created by a big fire in 2010 which stops the flames. Another was a fire break from the 1960 s. On this ridge what we can see is the vast back injury behind santa barbara. And as we look to the south side of this ridge we can see the dense communities of the south coast and you get the visual here of how much area there is to burn that can impact the communities of fort hood often. Rob and his colleagues knew that this was their only chance. For little back fire across this ridge line the grass was cleared off with mechanical equipment and we were able to burn along this ridge using our fire to take out you feel bad in between the main fire and this ridge line when the fire arrived at the fire break the fire crews were ready and waiting the fire reduces its intensity would have burns into the fuel break the flame links are smaller its more controllable and the firefighters have places to go if things get out of control. Are burning operation was successful we stopped the fire on this ridge line. But many interface areas do not have fire breaks to protect them from mega fires. We want our cake and want to be able to eat it too its nice to get away from busy urban centers but its unrealistic to expect that those places are going to be safe from natural process sees. Probably 2 thirds to 3 quarters of all new Housing Starts in the western u. S. Are being developed in very flammable and dangerous circumstances we have to come up with a more clever for polls all for how we live in these areas we cannot just keep sprawling outward because we cant keep you safe. Millions of people are at risk in zones that are becoming increasingly prone to far. Scientist at the misool of firesign says lab has dedicated his career to finding out would really happens when a fire invades a community. Jack cohen said a whole experimental forest on far to prove that the heat of the flames is not sufficient to ignite a home. Of the view clear you see of course but not ignited walther action nicely framed by the cracked wound. Now jacks research is the basis of an experiment which revealed what really causes the ignition of a home safely very intense while fire is producing lots of firebrands that then can cast down can shower down way ahead. Kilometers miles ahead of this intense flame from. The point needles that have accumulated in the rain gutters or cotton fabric so cut your furniture the wood in the debris that we might have on it there. Those are the things that make the house vulnerable to ignition. And once a house is on fire it produces its own members sitting off a chain reaction. To the wildfire actually doesnt spread through the community the burning things in the Community End up igniting the rest of the community. But does that mean that communities burning up during wildfires is inevitable. No. Its a home. Problem rather than a while for control problem. In Southern California communities are in a race against time to apply this discovery to millions of homes. In more recent years it seems like theres fires almost weve recovered from one and theres another one if its not here its close enough that we worry for friends or you know the cities nearby and the only part that hasnt burned is the part directly above me. My mom is terrified that i live here she thinks i should leave because fires are so dangerous. I live in a condo its wood i know that its not landscape the way that it should be 2 2. Are you. Ready you may remember we are in a party you so much for coming so we dont. Want far specialists like him or are inspecting homes one by one to try and make them less flammable. One thing that does concern me would be the mulch that you have around the side of your structure what moats does is it provides a receptive better a place where the ember can land in that night so one of the things that you can do is create a buffer