Fire

Fire!! A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists was an African American literary magazine published in New York City in 1926 during the Harlem Renaissance. The publication was started by Wallace Thurman, Zora Neale Hurston, Aaron Douglas, John P. Davis, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Bennett, Lewis Grandison Alexander, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. The magazine's title referred to burning up old ideas, and Fire!! challenged the norms of the older Black generation while featuring younger authors. The publishers promoted a realistic style, using vernacular language and covering controversial topics such as homosexuality and prostitution. Many readers were offended, and some Black leaders denounced the magazine. The endeavor was plagued by debt, and its quarters burned down, ending the magazine after just one issue.

Fire is the rapid oxidation of a fuel in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. Flames, the most visible portion of the fire, are produced in the combustion reaction when the fuel reaches its ignition point temperature. Flames from hydrocarbon fuels consist primarily of carbon dioxide, water vapor, oxygen, and nitrogen. If hot enough, the gases may become ionized to produce plasma. The color and intensity of the flame depend on the type of fuel and composition of the surrounding gases. Fire, in its most common form, has the potential to result in conflagration, which can lead to permanent physical damage. Fire directly affects land-based ecological systems worldwide. The benefits of fire include stimulating plant growth and maintaining ecological balance. Its harms include hazards to life and property, atmospheric pollution, and water contamination. When fire removes protective vegetation, heavy rainfall can cause soil erosion. The burning of vegetation releases nitrogen into the atmosphere, unlike other plant nutrients such as potassium and phosphorus, which remain in the ash and are quickly recycled into the soil. This loss of nitrogen produces a long-term reduction in the fertility of the soil. However, it can be recovered by nitrogen-fixing plants—some of them of agricultural value, such as clover, peas, and beans, by decomposition of animal waste and corpses, and by natural phenomena such as lightning. Fire is one of the four classical elements and has been used throughout human history for purposes that now include cooking, generating heat and light, clearing land for agriculture, signaling, propulsion, smelting, forging, incineration of waste, cremation, rituals, weapons, and destruction, including in warfare. Various technologies and strategies have been devised to prevent, manage, mitigate, and extinguish fires, with professional firefighters playing a leading role. For example, most home fires start from unattended cooking, although cigarettes are another major cause. Smoke detectors and sprinkler systems greatly reduce harm from home fires. { "type": "ExternalData", "service": "page", "title": "ROCEEH/Early_fire.map" } The ability to control fire was a dramatic change in the habits of early humans. Making fire to generate heat and light made it possible for people to cook food, simultaneously increasing the variety and availability of nutrients and reducing disease by killing pathogenic microorganisms in the food. The heat produced would also help people stay warm in cold weather, enabling them to live in cooler climates. Fire also kept nocturnal predators at bay. Evidence of occasional cooked food is found from , suggesting it was used in a controlled fashion. The oldest clear evidence of deliberate firemaking dates to around 400,000 years ago at the Hoxnian-aged Barnfield site in England, where pyrite appears to have been struck against flint to create fire. Evidence becomes widespread around 50 to 100 thousand years ago, suggesting regular use from this time; resistance to air pollution started to evolve in human populations at a similar point in time. The use of fire became progressively more sophisticated, as it was used to create charcoal and to control wildlife from tens of thousands of years ago. above fire in South Africa. By the Neolithic Revolution, during the introduction of grain-based agriculture, people all over the world used fire as a tool in landscape management. These fires were typically controlled burns or "cool fires", as opposed to uncontrolled "hot fires", which damage the soil. Hot fires destroy plants and animals and endanger communities. This is especially a problem in the forests of today where traditional burning is prevented to encourage the growth of timber crops. Cool fires are generally conducted in the spring and autumn. They clear undergrowth, burning up biomass that could trigger a hot fire should it get too dense. They provide a greater variety of environments, which encourages game and plant diversity. Humans make dense, impassable forests traversable. Another human use of fire in landscape management is to clear land for agriculture. Slash-and-burn agriculture is still common across much of tropical Africa, Asia, and South America. For small farmers, controlled fires are a convenient way to clear overgrown areas and release nutrients from standing vegetation back into the soil. However, this useful strategy is also problematic. A growing population, forest fragmentation, and a warming climate are making the Earth's surface more prone to ever-larger escaped fires. These harm ecosystems and human infrastructure, cause health problems, and send spirals of carbon and soot into the atmosphere that may encourage even more warming – and thus feed back into more fires. Globally today, as much as 5 million square kilometres – an area more than half the size of the United States – burns in a given year. === Management, prevention and protection systems === Controlling a fire to optimize its size, shape, and intensity is generally called fire management, and the more advanced forms of it, as traditionally (and sometimes still) practiced by skilled cooks, blacksmiths, ironmasters, and others, are highly skilled activities. They include knowledge of which fuel to burn; how to arrange the fuel; how to stoke the fire both in early phases and in maintenance phases; how to modulate the heat, flame, and smoke as suited to the desired application; how best to bank a fire to be revived later; how to choose, design, or modify stoves, fireplaces, bakery ovens, or industrial furnaces; and so on. Detailed expositions of fire management are available in various books on blacksmithing, skilled camping or military scouting, and domestic arts. Wildfire prevention programs around the world may employ techniques such as wildland fire use and prescribed or controlled burns. Wildland fire use refers to any fire of natural causes that is monitored but allowed to burn. Controlled burns are fires ignited by government agencies under less dangerous weather conditions. Fire prevention is intended to reduce sources of ignition. Fire prevention also includes education on how to avoid causing fires. Buildings, especially schools and tall buildings, often conduct fire drills to inform and prepare citizens on how to react to a building fire. Purposely starting destructive fires constitutes arson and is a crime in most jurisdictions. Model building codes require passive fire protection and active fire protection systems to minimize damage resulting from a fire. A common form of active fire protection is fire sprinklers. To maximize passive fire protection of buildings, building materials and furnishings in most developed countries are tested for fire-resistance, combustibility and flammability. Upholstery, carpeting and plastics used in vehicles and vessels are also tested. Studies have found that functioning smoke detectors reduce the risk of death in a fire by 50%, and sprinkler systems can reduce mortality by 100%. Fire-resistant clothing, beds, and sofas have also been shown to reduce injuries resulting from fires. In the United States, the leading cause of residential fires is cooking equipment, particularly cooking left unattended. It is estimated that cigarettes and other smoking materials are responsible for about 28% of home fires involving the ignition of upholstered furniture, and for approximately 58% of the fatalities in such fires. Fires started by cigarettes are also more lethal and have higher mortality rates than fires that spread from open flames. The adoption of fire-safe cigarettes has been associated with a 45% reduction in fires caused by cigarettes. Where fire prevention and fire protection have failed to prevent damage, fire insurance can mitigate the financial impact. ==In culture== ceremony Fire has been an importance element of human culture since the Lower Paleolithic. Archaeological evidence demonstrates that fire worship has been widely practiced since prehistory, with dedicated structures found dating from at least the Chalcolithic period. The religion of Zoroastrianism is closely linked to this practice. In some societies fire was a deity, while others viewed it as the manifestation of the divine. The fire in a hearth was perceived as symbolic of the Heavenly Fire, and thus is considered a sacred component by fire-worshipping cultures. The origin of fire became a subject of mythology. In ancient Greek culture, the Titan god Prometheus was responsible for stealing heavenly fire and giving it to humanity. The use of a pyre as a funerary practice dates back to at least the Ancient Roman period in the West, and to about 4,000 years ago on the Indian subcontinent. Cremation of corpses is a tradition long practiced in some cultures, including Hindu. After early religious resistance in some countries, in the 19th century this practice became more widespread and is now commonplace. In some nations, suicide by self-immolation remains common. The symbology of fire remains important to the present day. Where wood is plentiful, the bonfire can be used for celebration purposes, in many cases as part of a tradition. An example is Guy Fawkes Night in England. The barbecue is a fire-based cultural tradition in the United States. The fiery ignition of fireworks has become a modern tradition to celebrate the New Year's arrival. In contrast, book burning has been used as a form of protest, whether for political, religious, or moral reasons. The act of "burning in effigy" has a similar role, as in the annual burning of Judas ritual. Humans lack an instinctual fascination with fire, yet in modern societies, adults can become drawn to it out of curiosity. In societies that rely on daily fire use, children lose interest in fire around age 7 due to regular exposure. Arson is the act of intentionally setting fire to a property. A separate but related behavior is pyromania, which is classified as an impulse-control disorder where individuals repeatedly fail to resist impulses to start fires deliberately. In contrast is pyrophobia, an irrational fear of fire. This anxiety disorder is a less common phobia. ==Further reading== Haung, Kai (2009). Population and Building Factors That Impact Residential Fire Rates in Large U.S. Cities. Applied Research Project . Texas State University. Kosman, Admiel (January 13, 2011). "Sacred fire". Haaretz. Pyne, Stephen J. Fire : a brief history (University of Washington Press, 2001). Pyne, Stephen J. World fire : the culture of fire on earth (1995) online Pyne, Stephen J. Tending fire : coping with America's wildland fires (2004) online Pyne, Stephen J. Awful splendour : a fire history of Canada (2007) online Pyne, Stephen J. Burning bush : a fire history of Australia (1991) online Pyne, Stephen J. Between Two Fires: A Fire History of Contemporary America (2015) Pyne, Stephen J. California: A Fire Survey (2016) Safford, Hugh D., et al. "Fire ecology of the North American Mediterranean-climate zone." in Fire ecology and management: Past, present, and future of US forested ecosystems (2021): 337–392. re California and its neighbors online

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