Other forms: wildfires
A wildfire is an uncontrolled blaze, especially one that ignites rural areas with a lot of trees and dry brush. Factors like drought, unusually warm weather, and development can contribute to bigger wildfires.
Wildfires are a natural part of many forest lifecycles, but human activity and climate change have made these conflagrations more frequent and dangerous. Unextinguished campfires, lightning strikes, and power lines can all ignite a fire that spreads and becomes a wildfire, given dry enough conditions. The biggest U.S. wildfire, which burned acres of the Santa Fe National Forest in New Mexico, devastated an area larger than New York City. In Old English, a wildfire was a wilde fyr.