Just as there’s a hurricane season or a rainy season, it’s only natural that there also is a fire season. The fires that spark during the fire season bear different names, such as wildfire, wildland fire, forest fire, vegetation fire, grass fire, peat fire, hill fire or the Aussie-based bush fire. Although it has so many meanings, a wildfire or bush fire is basically a fire which is not controlled and which occurs out in the wild. It can be carried over hundreds of miles by wind, and can thus destroy crops and entirely burn down houses.

These fires also have a number of different causes. One of the most often in Australia, for example, is the heat waves which ignite the dry vegetation. Volcano eruptions and the pyroclastic clouds issued by active volcanoes are a more rare reason for the igniting of a full-fledged wild fire, but it is obviously more frequent in areas surrounding volcanoes. The most damaging, however, is the carelessness of people. It can be a lit cigarette thrown in the grass or the fire made on a camping trip for a barbecue or at night to keep warm. A loose spark in the woods can cause mayhem.

This year, a few fires hit California almost simultaneously. Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Sylmar, for instance, faced imminent threats from rapidly spreading wildfires. Records of wildfire damage began being kept in 1970, and since then, the damages of 2008 have been the worst so far – 1.24 million acres burned. Experts, however, say that things could have been a lot worse, as a lightning storm burned a lot of the rest of the territory.