The top 5 largest ever recorded wildfires
As humans have expanded and the Earth warms, wildfires have graduated to the big time natural disaster table.
Wildfires are a tricky natural disaster to manage, record and even catalog. Because while tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes can all be incredibly destructive, they sort of come in with a bang and leave rather quickly. This allows for metrics to be made which, if nothing else, neatly summarizes them into various classifications of destruction. Take the earthquake’s Richter scale (most professionals use the “moment magnitude scale” now but it’s less well known so we’ll stick with the Richter scale for the purpose of this explanation), it uses a rather easy to understand 0.1 to 10.0 logarithmic scale that tells you pretty much what to expect at every tenth of an point. Similar classifications do the same for basically all other natural disasters. Wildfires though? Not so much!
That said, it’s not like we’re completely absent any way to measure wildfires. There are tools and metrics that do try and classify wildfires, but they don’t appear to be standardized yet and not widely used. As such, we mostly see a couple different independent metrics used instead: amount of land burned and percent of wildfire contained. But neither really account for intensity or even things such as amount of carbon released due to the burning. Still, it’s the best we’ve got and, as such, I’ve decided to write an article on five of the largest wildfires in history based on amount of land burned. This would exclude this year’s record setting Canadian wildfire season of course because, well, it’s still burning! But if you are interested in learning more about those wildfires, Hunter and I recorded and entire podcast episode about them!
All this is to say: large wildfires are definitely on the rise, but they’ve kind of always been around too.
2003 Siberian Taiga wildfires
In the seemingly endless wilderness of Siberia, a fire sparked in 2003 that consumed an extraordinary 73,438 square miles (190,083 square kilometers). Though it claimed few human lives due to Siberia's sparse population, the fire's smoke had global reach, affecting air quality as far away as the United States.
Australia's 2019-2020 bushfires
Fast forward to the end of 2019, and Australia was on fire. With 71,820 square miles (186,012 square kilometers) engulfed, the sky over New South Wales turned a haunting shade of orange. Lives were irrevocably changed—33 humans and an estimated 3 billion animals perished. Over 3,000 homes were lost, and ecosystems that took millennia to form were wiped out in weeks.
As a reminder: Australia is in the southern hemisphere and, as such, has summer in the December - March timeframe, so their wildfire season is markedly different from the northern hemisphere.
Canada's 2014 Northwest Territories wildfires
In 2014, fires ravaged Canada's Northwest Territories, consuming 13,125 square miles (34,004 square kilometers). Indigenous communities were put at risk, their ancestral lands forever altered. The air turned thick and dangerous to breathe, and the accelerated permafrost melt began releasing ancient carbon deposits into the atmosphere. This, of course, would be the same Northwest Territories that hosted even larger fires this year, forcing the full evacuation of Yellowknife, the territory’s largest city.
Alaska's 2015 wildfires
In 2015, fires rampaged through 7,968 square miles (20,636 square kilometers) of Alaska. Families fled as the flames closed in, and the region's wildlife lost crucial habitats. Disturbingly, the fire released carbon that had been stored in the forest floor, further fueling the cycle of climate change. That last part is becoming a common theme amongst wildfires.
Australia's 1939 Black Friday bushfires
In 1939, Victoria, Australia was consumed by flames, affecting 7,656 square miles (19,830 square kilometers). Known as Black Friday, the fires claimed 71 lives and fundamentally reshaped Australia's approach to fire management. The damage to natural water and soil systems had long-lasting repercussions on agriculture.
Wildfires know no border
These fires are not just natural disasters but cautionary tales that speak to the need for proactive measures and global cooperation. Each fire shaped and reshaped how we understand land management, climate change, and human vulnerability in profound ways. And as our world continues to heat up, these fires could very well be harbingers of more devastating infernos to come.
But more important than that is the reminder that a wildfire has no border. And while it’s rare, though not entirely uncommon, for a wildfire to spread so large it crosses international borders, it’s impacts certainly do. This year, Canada’s wildfires created so much smoke that cities from Chicago, to Detroit, to New York City and Boston were inundated. Smoke even made its way to Europe and was seen in places like Copenhagen and London. As climate change increases the likelihood of ever more intense wildfires, we need to understand the geography of where those impacts are felt.