> How do you fight a wildfire? By depriving it of fuel.
> Maybe Waha did have the foresight to make the herds bare
> a stretch of chaparral so that the wildfire would run out.
Well, sort of. You literally fight fire with fire. If you are on the prairie, you will see a wildfire seom a long way away. It looks like a bunch of streamers of smoke, then becomes more like a wall, going with the wind. If you see if coming toward you, you light a back fire.
To do this, you light a fire downwind of you, in a stripe that is perpendicular to the wind. Usually, you light some thing and drag it behind you. The wind blows the flames down wind, away from you. After the fire sweeps away from you, you move onto the burnt-out area. The wildfire goes around you.
Note that there are two requirements for a prairie wild fire: (a) wind and (b) dry foliage. If there is no wind, prairie fires generally burn themselves out. Likewise during early spring when the foliage is all green. So the back fire works whenever you are likely to meet a real wildfire.
>From a Glorantha perspective, I'm sure that there is a backfire ritual that helps things along.
Note also that the pictures we all see of wildfires are often of wildfires that are much more intense than naturally occurring wildfires. These occur where humans systematically suppress fires for a long time, until they catch in an uncontrolled burn. They then burn an unnaturally large accumulation of fuel. If you look on the web for pictures of managed burns, that is often more like what a natural wildfire would look like on the prairie or chaparral.
Note finally that this does not work all that well with forests. So, I think that Waha was only able to tame wildfire after all the forests were gone.
Chris
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