We’ve grown accustomed to the scope and severity of wildland fires in the Western half of North America. But the past two years have also been historically active fire seasons in the Eastern half of Canada and the United States. In those areas, firefighters report more frequent wildland blazes in more places, and at less expected times. These wildland blazes are smaller than their Western cousins, but given the much higher population density—especially in New England—many firefighting and governmental agencies are gravely concerned, and feel woefully underprepared.

Historically Severe Wildfires in the East

It began in 2023, with large fires in Nova Scotia and Quebec. That same year, the Eastern United States saw 56 percent more wildland acreage burned than usual. Wildfires east of the Mississippi were even more extensive the following year. By late fall of 2024, nearly 11,000 fires had burned across 138,000 acres in a region that included the Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast. These included some of the largest fires the region has seen in decades. For example, in November 2024, the Jennings Creek Fire along the border of New York and New Jersey spread across more than 5,300 acres and took two full weeks to contain. That same month, in southwestern Massachusetts, the Butternut Fire burned more than 1,300 acres in less than three days.

These East Coast fires raged despite historically high rainfall in some of these areas: in August 2024, Connecticut experienced violent storms and flooding. Some parts of the state saw 6 to 10 inches of rain in just a few hours, a so-called “1,000-year” rain event. Nonetheless, by that fall, more than 95 percent of the state qualified as a severe drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. By late October, the country’s third-smallest state had 50 active wildfires, necessitating 340,000 gallons of arial water drops—a tactic the Connecticut has not used in 30 years.

New Fire Dynamics Demand New Firefighting Methods

Most of these wildland fires may seem small by Western standards, where the average wildland fire is now 11,000 acres. But higher population density means that even relatively small fires threaten more structures and people. It also makes it much more common for wildland fires to “go both ways”: cinders from a house or garage fire can drift into nearby wildland, sparking a brushfire that goes unnoticed until it spreads and grows, threatening homes and businesses in neighboring communities.

These new and concerning dynamics are driving demand among more agencies to better prepare to fight fires at the wildland-urban interface—a challenging situation they’ve rarely had to consider before.

FAAC has long supported comprehensive firefighter training through the immersive inCommand Incident Management Simulation solution. Powered by the XVR simulation platform, InCommand is built from the ground up to create the most realistic, reproducible, and customizable training scenarios possible. Each scenario can address all the levels of strategic, tactical, and operational thinking that come into play during a critical incident like a wildland fire. This simulation training platform is inherently scalable, in terms of class size, scenario complexity, and organizational hierarchy.

FAAC Reimagined Training Sims to Meet New Demands

InCommand now incorporates the latest version XVR On Scene 10 and its new wildland-urban interface fire dynamics simulator. This isn’t a simple update—it is a complete overhaul of how wildland fires are simulated in a wildfire response training system. This latest wildland and wildland-urban fire dynamics simulator puts the instructor in complete control, with a more intuitive and user-friendly interface, in addition to greater visual and physical accuracy in how fires and their behavior are represented. The result is a flexible simulation training platform that features realistic visualisation and dynamics reflecting a brushfire’s development and intensity, as well as the effects of suppression efforts.

According to FAAC Public Safety Business Manager Bill Martin, “This is an extremely exciting development. The new wildland fire simulation captures the varying intensity of a wildfire, and gives the instructor the ability to set that fire perimeter and control how the area being burned progresses through the fire stages. The firefighter can remove vegetation or take other measures, but it’s really always up to the instructor how those fare. This advanced new wildland fire simulator is already available to all inCommand users who are on an upgrade path. We’re really excited to get them upgraded, and learn more about how they’re making use of these powerful new tools.”

Want to learn more? Contact FAAC today—our team of experts looks forward to answering all your questions.