Talk:Yellowstone fires of 1988

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Former featured articleYellowstone fires of 1988 is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on September 8, 2008.
On this day... Article milestones
DateProcessResult
August 16, 2007Peer reviewReviewed
September 3, 2007Featured article candidatePromoted
November 19, 2022Featured article reviewDemoted
On this day... Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on August 20, 2012, August 20, 2017, and August 20, 2018.
Current status: Former featured article

Recovery[edit]

It has been nearly twenty-five years. Could the state of the burned areas today be compared to the condition of the park just before 1988? Fotoguzzi (talk) 04:21, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This could probably be expanded in the article...I'll look into it this weekend.MONGO 14:02, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Nice idea for an article. Eperotao (talk) 04:38, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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Layout of references[edit]

I changed the {{reflist}} to {{reflist|30em}} but MONGO reverted it. I'd like to know what other people think the layout of the referencing should be. Anarchyte (work | talk) 14:00, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Looks squashed and reduces font too much. Not a helpful alteration so I reverted it.--MONGO 20:54, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like editor's choice according to {{reflist}}, so a subjective choice among editors. I tend to prefer the multiple columns myself, it just seems less daunting to the eye than the single column display.--KingJeff1970 (talk) 17:21, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I usually agree with articles of over 50 refs.--MONGO 04:41, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Firestorm[edit]

There is a technical definition of a firestorm, firestorm is not a vague slang term. Hot, wind-driven forest fires are almost never firestorms. Firestorms are intense fires where so much heat is rising that it sucks air in from all directions at ground level, like a thunderstorm. An example would be the firebombing of Dresden. Winds at ground level were so strong that trees were uprooted and fell towards the fire. In this article the term "firestorm" is used to describe intense fires which were driven by strong winds. These are NOT firestorms. For this reason the description of these fires as "firestorms" should be removed. Please read the Firestorm article before restoring any text describing the fires in Yellowstone as "firestorms". Senor Cuete (talk) 17:47, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

From the Firestorm article:

"the phenomenon's determining characteristic is a fire with its own storm-force winds from every point of the compass."

"Large wildfire conflagrations are distinct from firestorms if they have moving fire fronts which are driven by the ambient wind and do not develop their own wind system like true firestorms."

Senor Cuete (talk) 17:54, 25 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Edit war, edit war. What a shame that user:MONGO refuses to follow Wikipedia policy and discuss this here. I can't actually make complete sense of what he says about this in his reason for reverting my edit but it appears that he's claiming that lots of references mention the "firestorms", but won't cite them. Also it appears that he hasn't read what I posted here or refuses to read about what a firestorm actually is. The article clearly describes wind-driven running crown fires, which are NOT firestorms. Seriously, how about a reliable source? Senor Cuete (talk) 02:05, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Takes two to edit war. The article needs to be updated as some refs are dead. Here is a NPS document that relates that the fires that approached the Old Faithfuil Complex were a "fire storm" [1] "Fire storm blasts Old Faithful area in afternoon..." From this book...pick a section...fires so intense they created their own winds, fire tornados and gale force updrafts...[2]. NPS article...[3], page 191, (my bold) "On September 7, high winds brought the North Fork Fire blaze to the Old Faithful complex, the first time fire had threatened the area in the 116-year history of the park. An aerial suppression assault attempted to slow the fire’s progress, but those efforts failed. Early in the morning, the National Park Service evacuated the complex. Between 500 and 600 people left by the 10 a.m. deadline, although visitors traveling by car still were allowed to visit the geyser as late as mid-afternoon, some arriving just minutes before the firestorm struck. The fire eventually encircled the Old Faithful area, and firefighters successfully battled to save the Old Faithful Inn as well as the electrical substation nearby. The fire burned so hot that it melted the rubber off the wheels of cars and a truck, shattered vehicle windshields, and scorched their paint. As many as nineteen buildings in the area burned to the ground, and the old dormitory building suffered damage. No one was hurt in defense of Old Faithful, although two deaths were associated with the North Fork Fire in the Greater Yellowstone Area." Here [4], here [5]. Some of the fires in Yellowstone were not "storms". Others depending on the day were, such as the effects of several fires on Black Saturday....[6], "On Black Saturday (Aug. 20, 1988), 165,000 acres burned inside Yellowstone. A friend flying over it in an airplane said the convection clouds rising from the firestorms into the stratosphere made it appear that Yellowstone was under nuclear attack". You can call all that editorializing or whatever, or say it wasn't as bad as perhaps the bombing of Dresden, but anyone within the worst part of these numerous fires and or firestorms would have perished.--MONGO 04:16, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The article describes the fire as advancing on Old Faithful, however according to the Firestorm article, a true firestorm can't advance because it is sucking air in from all directions so strongly. Also a true firestorm can only result from multiple ignition points and a fire with an advancing flame front isn't a firestorm. Yes the heat columns and pyrocumulus clouds from these fires (and any plume-dominated fire) were very dramatic, but this doesn't make them firestorms. Unaware that there actually is a technical definition for this very rare phenomenon, authors may have thrown the term "firestorm" around loosely but Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and its job is to get it right. Senor Cuete (talk) 16:11, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Multiple RS clearly use the term and we back what the RS say. I can add those RS to the article if needed. I don't edit the Firestorms article and we don't use Wikipedia as a RS or as a reference for our other articles. This article is about the mentioned fires and firestorms sometimes associated with them. Perhaps since the Firestorm article isn't an FA it needs to be adjusted to reflect the realities and RS regarding what a firestorm is.--MONGO 17:36, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The firestorm article is the model of an excellent article. Everything is referenced to a very extensive set of reliable sources. This has been studied extensively, starting in WW II when the USAF accidentally started a firestorm in Hamburg. They had American physicist, Freeman Dyson, come up with a theoretical model of this and his calculations were verified in an experiment - the firebombing of Dresden. This knowledge was used later to destroy other cities such as Tokyo. Your suggestion that the article is wrong and that you should edit it to "adjusted to reflect the realities and RS regarding what a firestorm is", is extraordinarily ridiculous. The question here is whether the Yellowstone fires article would be better if it called the fires "firestorms", which technically they were not, or if it would be just as good if they were simply referred to as "fires". If the "firestorm" text remains, these could be tagged with something like disputed, discuss on talk page, or other tags questioning their correctness. One way around this would be to add a note which would mention that technically they weren't firestorms, linking to the firestorm article and saying that authors of articles use the term "firestorm" to describe an intense fire. Senor Cuete (talk) 22:15, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The Firestorm article has not been peer reviewed or been through a featured article review...this one has. At this point you're simply being pedantic. I'll restore all firestorm mentions and reference them. I'll be careful to not make claims that are not backed by RS. As a former fire management officer (strike team leader) and someone who actually participated in these fires I witnessed black Saturday as well as the blow ups at Norris, Grant Village and on September 10 near Mammoth. Regardless, I have provided references that are both reliable and authoritative. If you continue to act disruptively as you mention you plan on being, further steps will be necessary.--MONGO 23:51, 26 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, asking Wikipedia articles to be technically correct is pedantic. Your work as a firefighter is irrelevant because it's an argument from authority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority. An argument from authority is a logical fallacy any spurious argument. Obviously you own this article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ownership_of_content#Types_of_ownership. There is such a thing as disruptive editing, but this isn't it. So what "further steps" are you threatening me with? Senor Cuete (talk) 15:24, 27 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Parking some refs in conjunction with those already presented. Will adjust wording in article and add RS in support soon as I have adequate time.

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Total cost: $120 million or $123 million?[edit]

@Mongo: @LightandDark2000: Please discuss your edit conflict here, not in your edit summaries. A few thoughts:

  • It's common practice to state the cost of a disaster in terms of property damage plus cleanup/emergency response.
  • The NPS source states "More than 25,000 firefighters, as many as 9,000 at one time, attacked Yellowstone fires in 1988, at a total cost of about $120 million" and "Estimated property damage totaled more than $3 million".
  • I don't feel comfortable adding $3 million to the $120 million unless we can find a source that gives more exact numbers. "About $120 million" could mean anything from $115 to $124 million, so stating it as $123 million gives a false sense of precision. The total would still be about $120 million regardless of whether or not we include property damage.

I propose stating the estimated cost as "$120 million (suppression) and $3 million (property damage)" or something similar. –dlthewave ☎ 17:19, 18 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Personally, I suggest using an overall total of $123 million, with a note stating $120 million in suppression costs, and $3 million in property damage, as you have suggested above. In natural disaster articles, we usually include cleanup/suppression costs alongside property damage, in in other wildfire articles, this method has already been in use for years. I could easily add a note tag explaining the exact breakdown as you suggested above, and I'm willing to do this. LightandDark2000 (talk) 01:10, 20 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I have implemented the suggested changes. And according to the use of scientific significant figures, the "$120 million" figure in suppression costs equates to an estimated $120.0 million after rounding off the last digit, unless there were significant inaccuracies in the original report. LightandDark2000 (talk) 02:24, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Costs are approximated always especially in events of such calamity. Costs of fighting the fires has long been reported and has not deviated from 120 million. When discussing the costs of fighting the fires the losses are an addition to that and are listed separately.--MONGO 14:17, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Citation[edit]

I added a citation, can someone edit it to make it point to a specific part of the article I put? Thank you! MrRobloxDev lgjavajr (talk) 16:11, 10 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

WP:URFA/2020[edit]

  • Plenty of unsourced statements that were already tagged and have since been tagged.
  • Quite a bit of grammatical errors throughout the article.
  • Image stacking is going on, which violates the MOS.
  • Suggest adding alt text.
  • Any recovery of the vegetation since 2008? It seems it hadn't yet reached the extent it was before the fire in 1987.
  • Any updates to fire management in recent times as a result of the Yellowstone fires?
  • Check here for academic literature related to both of the above items.

Given the severity of the first three issues alone, I am listing this at WP:FARGIVEN. NoahTalk 13:43, 5 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"Severity"...how about you at least have awaited a talkpage response before acting so rashly? Good grief.--MONGO (talk) 05:54, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Fire capitalization[edit]

Hi all, not sure whether this is a settled question or not. All the fire names as used in the article have 'fire' as lower-case, as in North Fork fire, Red fire, etc. This is the style used by many news sources, such as the New York Times, but the federal government (including the NPS and InciWeb) always capitalize the Fire, and so do most wildfire Wikipedia articles. Capitalization is my usual preference; it makes clear that the name of the fire is the name, as opposed to just a geographic indicator.

Do people have a preference for keeping the lower-case? If no one is opposed I'd like to move to upper. Penitentes (talk) 13:54, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Upper case is used mostly for proper names, so Mosquito Fire, or even for fires formed by groups of smaller ones (August Complex Fire), but not for plain names like this one, where "Yellowstone fires" is not a proper name, just an adjective and noun. If it were named "Yellowstone Fire" then the title would be "Yellowstone Fire" or "Yellowstone Fire (1988)". Wikipedians are very reluctant to capitalize; WP:NCCAPS has more information. Ovinus (talk) 15:19, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, yeah, no—'Yellowstone fires' is def correct, I just meant the individual fires within the event (the North Fork fire, the Red fire, the Fan fire, etc.). I totally agree that groups of wildfires get a different proper noun status. Penitentes (talk) 15:59, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh!! Oops. I actually prefer "Red Fire", "Shoshone Fire", yeah. Fwiw, the Forest Service capitalizes them ([8]). Will check the journal sources once I've gathered them. Ovinus (talk) 16:34, 20 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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