Military flares can burn ten times more land than lightning
Military pyrotechnics burn with such intensity that their fragments can ignite dry landscapes from five hundred meters away, creating fires that are nearly impossible to extinguish.
A single training flare launched during a drill can reach temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Celsius, a heat so intense it dwarfs the ignition point of dry brush by three times. When these incendiary fragments land, they don't just spark a flame; they emit a constant flow of radiant heat that forces the surrounding vegetation to combust almost instantly. In the 't Harde region of the Netherlands, one such exercise spiraled into a massive blaze that consumed 500 hectares of land. These military-grade fires are particularly dangerous because they often occur in remote impact areas littered with unexploded ordnance, which can detonate if the ground temperature reaches 400 degrees Celsius.
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