When the brush and trees adjacent to the track are tinder dry, these sparks are a constant fire problem. Widening the shoulder bed between the tracks and the trees help, but some railroads send a tanker car behind the primary train just to hose down hot spots. It has been long recognized that fires can actually enrich and revitalize old forests. They actually make the forest habitat more attractive to many animals and plants. Of course, a burned forest is less appealing to the two-legged animals that use it for recreational purposes.
Fire is an integral part of an ecosystem, and without it, many species lose their competitive niche.
For instance, heat from a fire is the only way that serotinuous cones, like Redwoods, will open and disperse their seeds. In the Los Alamos fire, wind gusts of 60 miles per hour stoked the blaze and spread it over the hills of north central New Mexico. As a guide which describes the potential for a fire to grow, a rating system called the Haines Index is used that gives values from 2 to 6. A value of 2 means that conditions are favorable for controlled burning if other factors, including wind speed and humidity, are also favorable. A value of 6 indicates that conditions are such that it's very likely that an intentionally set fire will grow quickly.