The Fire Triangle

Fire must have three elements in order to burn; 1) Fuel 2) oxygen 3) heat. If you remove one of these elements, the fire will go out or diminish. For example, if you have a burning candle and you put a jar over the top of it, it eventually goes out. Why? Because you have removed the oxygen from the fire, and it cannot burn without it.

Firefighters extinguish fire by taking away one or two elements of the fire triangle. For example, when firefighters spray fire with water, it goes out because they have removed the heat element of the fire triangle. When firefighters dig fire line around a wildfire, the fire is extinguished once it reaches the fire line because firefighters have removed the fuel element from the fire triangle.

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