The Topanga Fire: A Dramatic Response to Topography, Fuels, and Critical Fire Weather Conditions

For the firefighting community, dealing with extreme wildland fire behavior is very challenging. To complicate matters, there are a number of key variables that can contribute to extreme fire behavior with rapid fire growth. In order to assist in predicting fire behavior, the fire behavior triangle was created (Figure 1). The fire behavior triangle consists of three sides: Topography (slope, aspect, etc.), Fuels (type, moisture, loading, etc.) and Weather (temperature, relative humidity, wind, etc.). When all three sides of the triangle are present, extreme fire behavior with rapid fire growth is highly likely (USDA 2007).