Talk:Yellowstone fires of 1988

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Recovery

It has been nearly twenty-five years. Could the state of the burned areas today be compared to the condition of the park just before 1988? Fotoguzzi (talk) 04:21, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

This could probably be expanded in the article...I'll look into it this weekend.MONGO 14:02, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Nice idea for an article. Eperotao (talk) 04:38, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

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Layout of references

I changed the {{reflist}} to {{reflist|30em}} but MONGO reverted it. I'd like to know what other people think the layout of the referencing should be. Anarchyte (work | talk) 14:00, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Looks squashed and reduces font too much. Not a helpful alteration so I reverted it.--MONGO 20:54, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Seems like editor's choice according to {{reflist}}, so a subjective choice among editors. I tend to prefer the multiple columns myself, it just seems less daunting to the eye than the single column display.--KingJeff1970 (talk) 17:21, 25 August 2016 (UTC)

I usually agree with articles of over 50 refs.--MONGO 04:41, 26 August 2016 (UTC)

Firestorm

There is a technical definition of a firestorm, firestorm is not a vague slang term. Hot, wind-driven forest fires are almost never firestorms. Firestorms are intense fires where so much heat is rising that it sucks air in from all directions at ground level, like a thunderstorm. An example would be the firebombing of Dresden. Winds at ground level were so strong that trees were uprooted and fell towards the fire. In this article the term "firestorm" is used to describe intense fires which were driven by strong winds. These are NOT firestorms. For this reason the description of these fires as "firestorms" should be removed. Please read the Firestorm article before restoring any text describing the fires in Yellowstone as "firestorms". Senor Cuete (talk) 17:47, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

From the Firestorm article:

"the phenomenon's determining characteristic is a fire with its own storm-force winds from every point of the compass."

"Large wildfire conflagrations are distinct from firestorms if they have moving fire fronts which are driven by the ambient wind and do not develop their own wind system like true firestorms."

Senor Cuete (talk) 17:54, 25 September 2016 (UTC)

Edit war, edit war. What a shame that user:MONGO refuses to follow Misplaced Pages policy and discuss this here. I can't actually make complete sense of what he says about this in his reason for reverting my edit but it appears that he's claiming that lots of references mention the "firestorms", but won't cite them. Also it appears that he hasn't read what I posted here or refuses to read about what a firestorm actually is. The article clearly describes wind-driven running crown fires, which are NOT firestorms. Seriously, how about a reliable source? Senor Cuete (talk) 02:05, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Takes two to edit war. The article needs to be updated as some refs are dead. Here is a NPS document that relates that the fires that approached the Old Faithfuil Complex were a "fire storm" "Fire storm blasts Old Faithful area in afternoon..." From this book...pick a section...fires so intense they created their own winds, fire tornados and gale force updrafts.... NPS article..., page 191, (my bold) "On September 7, high winds brought the North Fork Fire blaze to the Old Faithful complex, the first time fire had threatened the area in the 116-year history of the park. An aerial suppression assault attempted to slow the fire’s progress, but those efforts failed. Early in the morning, the National Park Service evacuated the complex. Between 500 and 600 people left by the 10 a.m. deadline, although visitors traveling by car still were allowed to visit the geyser as late as mid-afternoon, some arriving just minutes before the firestorm struck. The fire eventually encircled the Old Faithful area, and firefighters successfully battled to save the Old Faithful Inn as well as the electrical substation nearby. The fire burned so hot that it melted the rubber off the wheels of cars and a truck, shattered vehicle windshields, and scorched their paint. As many as nineteen buildings in the area burned to the ground, and the old dormitory building suffered damage. No one was hurt in defense of Old Faithful, although two deaths were associated with the North Fork Fire in the Greater Yellowstone Area." Here , here . Some of the fires in Yellowstone were not "storms". Others depending on the day were, such as the effects of several fires on Black Saturday...., "On Black Saturday (Aug. 20, 1988), 165,000 acres burned inside Yellowstone. A friend flying over it in an airplane said the convection clouds rising from the firestorms into the stratosphere made it appear that Yellowstone was under nuclear attack". You can call all that editorializing or whatever, or say it wasn't as bad as perhaps the bombing of Dresden, but anyone within the worst part of these numerous fires and or firestorms would have perished.--MONGO 04:16, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

The article describes the fire as advancing on Old Faithful, however according to the Firestorm article, a true firestorm can't advance because it is sucking air in from all directions so strongly. Also a true firestorm can only result from multiple ignition points and a fire with an advancing flame front isn't a firestorm. Yes the heat columns and pyrocumulus clouds from these fires (and any plume-dominated fire) were very dramatic, but this doesn't make them firestorms. Unaware that there actually is a technical definition for this very rare phenomenon, authors may have thrown the term "firestorm" around loosely but Misplaced Pages is an encyclopedia and its job is to get it right. Senor Cuete (talk) 16:11, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Multiple RS clearly use the term and we back what the RS say. I can add those RS to the article if needed. I don't edit the Firestorms article and we don't use Misplaced Pages as a RS or as a reference for our other articles. This article is about the mentioned fires and firestorms sometimes associated with them. Perhaps since the Firestorm article isn't an FA it needs to be adjusted to reflect the realities and RS regarding what a firestorm is.--MONGO 17:36, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

The firestorm article is the model of an excellent article. Everything is referenced to a very extensive set of reliable sources. This has been studied extensively, starting in WW II when the USAF accidentally started a firestorm in Hamburg. They had American physicist, Freeman Dyson, come up with a theoretical model of this and his calculations were verified in an experiment - the firebombing of Dresden. This knowledge was used later to destroy other cities such as Tokyo. Your suggestion that the article is wrong and that you should edit it to "adjusted to reflect the realities and RS regarding what a firestorm is", is extraordinarily ridiculous. The question here is whether the Yellowstone fires article would be better if it called the fires "firestorms", which technically they were not, or if it would be just as good if they were simply referred to as "fires". If the "firestorm" text remains, these could be tagged with something like disputed, discuss on talk page, or other tags questioning their correctness. One way around this would be to add a note which would mention that technically they weren't firestorms, linking to the firestorm article and saying that authors of articles use the term "firestorm" to describe an intense fire. Senor Cuete (talk) 22:15, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

The Firestorm article has not been peer reviewed or been through a featured article review...this one has. At this point you're simply being pedantic. I'll restore all firestorm mentions and reference them. I'll be careful to not make claims that are not backed by RS. As a former fire management officer (strike team leader) and someone who actually participated in these fires I witnessed black Saturday as well as the blow ups at Norris, Grant Village and on September 10 near Mammoth. Regardless, I have provided references that are both reliable and authoritative. If you continue to act disruptively as you mention you plan on being, further steps will be necessary.--MONGO 23:51, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes, asking Misplaced Pages articles to be technically correct is pedantic. Your work as a firefighter is irrelevant because it's an argument from authority https://en.wikipedia.org/Argument_from_authority. An argument from authority is a logical fallacy any spurious argument. Obviously you own this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content#Types_of_ownership. There is such a thing as disruptive editing, but this isn't it. So what "further steps" are you threatening me with? Senor Cuete (talk) 15:24, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

*...applicable to three to five fires in the park.

authoritative source.

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