gigafire

English

The 2020 August Complex fire, the first gigafire in California.

Etymology

From giga- +‎ fire.

Noun

gigafire (plural gigafires)

1. (neologism) A wildfire which burns more than one million acres.
   • [2018 October 26, Bill Gabbert, “Bushfire in Australia burns over 2 million acres, becoming a "gigafire"”, in Wildfire Today‎^[1], archived from the original on 2022-08-31:

     When we coined the term "megafire" for wildfires that exceed 100,000 acres, it was in the back of our mind that if a fire reached 1 million acres it would be called a "gigafire".]

   • 2020 October 5, Andrew Freedman, “California sees first ever ’gigafire’ and passes 4 million acres burned”, in The Washington Post‎^[2], Washington, D.C.: The Washington Post Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2022-12-02:

     In addition, due in part to human-caused warming and a drying climate, California recorded its first "gigafire" since modern records began in the early 1930s.

   • 2020 October 23, Vivian Ho, “Fire tore through the Karuk tribe’s homeland. Many won’t be able to rebuild”, in Katharine Viner, editor, The Guardian‎^[3], London: Guardian News & Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-02-09:

     In a historic fire season with million-acre gigafires and more than two dozen deaths, the destruction in Happy Camp barely broke through the long list of dire news stories making the headlines.

   • 2021 October 13, Mark Brennan, Tanaya Srini, Justin Steil, Miho Mazereeuw, Larisa Ovalles, “A Perfect Storm? Disasters and Evictions”, in Housing Policy Debate, volume 32, number 1, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 53:

     From Category 5 hurricanes to flooding from sea-level rise to gigafires, the value of losses from severe weather or climate-related disasters in the United States over the past several years has been unprecedented.

   • 2022 August 24, David Wallace-Wells, “The American West’s Haunting, Smoke-Filled Future”, in The New York Times‎^[4], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2023-05-23:

     Just a few years ago, fire scientists thought that the burn scars of all these megafires and gigafires might help check future spread, theorizing that it would take a while for the landscape to recover and that what would grow back could prove less flammable than what burned originally.

Related terms

• megafire