Some of nature's most destructive forces get a rating to indicate their potential. Wildfires may soon join disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes and tornadoes that already have a rating convention.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology hopes its Wildland Urban Interface Hazard scale will tell residents the likely intensity of a wildfire burning into their neighborhood. The scale would allow city planners to assign better building codes for the millions of people who live in fire-prone areas in the West and would also measure how those homes could contribute to the spread of a fire.
The proposed scale would range from E1 to E4 - with E4 being a location's highest exposure to fire.
Someone in Oklahoma may wonder if this scale naming will create any public confusion, given we use a similar scale to measure tornadoes. The tornado scale is the EF scale (EF0 to EF5).
Researcher Nelson Bryner says the scale is primarily meant to form the technical foundation for tougher building codes for high-risk areas.