Mercifully wildfires are not something us in the UK have to be too worried about. With such damp and dismal conditions lighting a fire on purpose when camping or having a bonfire is hard enough, so times when they start accidently in the wilderness are few and far between?
It is a completely different story in the United States however, as there are typically between 60,000 and 80,000 wildfires that occur each year, burning between 3 million to 10 million acres (12,000 to 40,000 square kilometres) of land.
Whilst the ecological effects of fire on the whole are negative, at times the disaster can be even greater when there are a loss of structures including people’s home and even sometimes life itself.
With this in mind filmmaker Jeff Frost has put together a new timelapse video/documentary, titled Fire Chasers, in which he hot foots it deep into the California wildfires of the past couple of years.
In stunning 4K you can take a look at just how colossal, unpredictable, and truly frightening they can be.
Frost hopes to utilise Fire Chasers to raise awareness about ongoing threats to the environment and eventually turn it into a feature length documentary and book with all the footage he has gathered from over the years, including the Rocky Forest Fire last year in California which nearly cost him his life. Dangerous yes, but it is his is willing to take these risks to get his point across – his point being that latest figures have it that almost 90% of the fires in the US have some human involvement, with the vast majority of it being down to pure carelessness.
You can view the video below and download it for free via Vimeo until March 15.