The fire finally knows how to spread

For a while, a fire alarm just marked an area where something could catch — it didn’t decide how much of it actually burned. This week that changed.

An alarm now catches at a single point and spreads outward from there, jumping between trees, buildings, and anything else nearby that can burn. Small alarms stay small and contained. Big ones can sprawl outward, sometimes far enough to spread into a neighboring area entirely — which makes for some genuinely nasty calls if you’re not fast enough.

Every alarm is also tracked as its own emergency, separate from the area it started in: put out everything the fire has actually ignited — or let it burn itself out before your crew arrives — and the call resolves as a win. Leave it to burn everything down instead, and it’s a loss.

Next up: getting a truck out to one of these alarms.