Fire storm

A fire storm is usually a natural phenomenon, created during forest fires. A fire storm combines fire with the mass movement of air to create a fire of extreme intensity over a wide area.

A man-made fire storm was first created in the bombing of Dresden in World War II.

The fire-bombing consisted of dropping large amounts of high-explosive to expose the timbers within buildings, followed by incendiary devices (fire-sticks) to ignite them and then more high-explosives to hamper the efforts of the fire services. This eventually created a self-sustaining 'fire storm' with temperatures peaking at over 1500 degrees C. After the area caught fire, the air above the bombed area, become extremely hot and rose rapidly. Cold air then rushed in at ground level from the outside and people were sucked into the fire.