How do people die in a wildfire?

A fallen tree branch, a miscalculation behind the wheel, a decision to leave in separate cars, a wrong turn. These were among the simple things that made the difference between life and death for some of the 42 known victims of California's deadly wildfires. read more

The District of Columbia with a relative risk of 2.7, lead the group followed by Arkansas (2.3), Mississippi (2.2) and Alabama (2.1). People living in California, Nevada and Utah were 50 percent less likely to die in a fire than the general population. read more

Wildfires, peat fires and controlled burns on farming lands kill 339,000 people worldwide each year, said a study released on Saturday that is the first to estimate a death toll for landscape fires. Most of those deaths are concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 157,000 people die as a result of being exposed to such fires annually, with southeast Asia ranking second with 110,000 deaths. read more

I was once caught in a wildfire during the military service and was able to count it: Some trees, specially conifers, contain a lot of volatile oils that literally explode and nearby trees catch fire at lightning speed, you can get quickly surrounded by a wall of flames and the heat is very intense even if the flames are relatively far away. read more