The ignition and extinguishing of a pile of wood shavings
Fire is the rapidoxidation of afuel in theexothermic chemical process ofcombustion, releasingheat,light, and various reactionproducts.[1][a]Flames, the most visible portion of the fire, are produced in the combustion reaction when the fuel reaches itsignition point. Flames fromhydrocarbon fuels consist primarily of carbon dioxide, water vapor, oxygen, and nitrogen. If hot enough, the gases may become ionized to produceplasma.[2] Thecolor andintensity of the flame depend on the type of fuel and composition of the surrounding gases.[3]
Fire, in its most common form, has the potential to result inconflagration, which can lead to permanent physical damage. It directly impacts land-based ecological systems worldwide. The positive effects of fire include stimulating plant growth and maintaining ecological balance. Its negative effects include hazards to life and property, atmospheric pollution, and water contamination.[4] When fire removesprotective vegetation, heavyrainfall can causesoil erosion.[5] The burning of vegetation releasesnitrogen into the atmosphere, unlike other plant nutrients such aspotassium andphosphorus which remain in theash and are quickly recycled into the soil.[6][7] This loss of nitrogen produces a long-term reduction in the fertility of the soil, though it can be recovered bynitrogen-fixing plants such asclover,peas, andbeans; by decomposition of animal waste and corpses, and by natural phenomena such aslightning.
Fire is one of the fourclassical elements and has been used by humans inrituals, in agriculture for clearing land, for cooking, generating heat and light, for signaling, propulsion purposes,smelting,forging,incineration of waste,cremation, and as a weapon or mode of destruction. Various technologies and strategies have been devised toprevent, manage,mitigate, and extinguish fires, with professionalfirefighters playing a leading role.
The fossil record of fire first appears with the establishment of a land-based flora in theMiddle Ordovician period,470 million years ago,[10] which contributed large amounts ofoxygen to the atmosphere, as the new hordes of land plants pumped it out as a waste product. When this concentration rose above 13%, it permitted the possibility ofwildfire.[11] Wildfire is first recorded in theLate Silurian fossil record,420 million years ago, by fossils ofcharred plants.[12][13] Apart from a controversial gap in theLate Devonian, charcoal is present ever since.[13] The level of atmospheric oxygen is closely correlated with the amount of charcoal in the fossil record, clearly pointing to oxygen as the key factor in the prevalence of wildfire.[14] Fire also became more abundant when grasses became the dominant component of many ecosystems, around6 to 7 million years ago,[15] providing excellenttinder for more rapid spread of fire.[14] This widespread emergence of wildfire may have initiated apositive feedback process, whereby they produced a warmer, drier climate more conducive to fire.[14]
Human control
The period of history characterized by the influence of human-caused fire activity on Earth has been dubbed thepyrocene. This epoch includes the burning offossil fuels, especially for technological uses.[16]
The ability to control fire was a dramatic change in the habits of early humans.[17]Making fire to generate heat and light made it possible for people tocook food, simultaneously increasing the variety and availability of nutrients and reducing disease by killing pathogenic microorganisms in the food.[18] The heat produced would also help people stay warm in cold weather, enabling them to live in cooler climates. Fire also kept nocturnal predators at bay. Evidence of occasional cooked food is found from1 million years ago,[19] suggesting it was used in a controlled fashion.[20][21] Other sources put the date of regular use at 400,000 years ago.[22] Evidence becomes widespread around 50 to 100 thousand years ago, suggesting regular use from this time; resistance toair pollution started to evolve in human populations at a similar point in time.[22] The use of fire became progressively more sophisticated, as it was used to create charcoal and to control wildlife from tens of thousands of years ago.[22]
By theNeolithic Revolution, during the introduction of grain-based agriculture, people all over the world used fire as a tool inlandscape management. These fires were typicallycontrolled burns or "cool fires", as opposed to uncontrolled "hot fires", which damage the soil. Hot fires destroy plants and animals, and endanger communities.[23] This is especially a problem in the forests of today where traditional burning is prevented in order to encourage the growth of timber crops. Cool fires are generally conducted in the spring and autumn. They clear undergrowth, burning upbiomass that could trigger a hot fire should it get too dense. They provide a greater variety of environments, which encourages game and plant diversity. For humans, they make dense, impassable forests traversable.[24]
Another human use for fire in regards to landscape management is its use to clear land for agriculture.Slash-and-burn agriculture is still common across much of tropical Africa, Asia and South America. For small farmers, controlled fires are a convenient way to clear overgrown areas and release nutrients from standing vegetation back into the soil.[25] However, this useful strategy is also problematic. Growing population, fragmentation of forests and warming climate are making the earth's surface more prone to ever-larger escaped fires. These harm ecosystems and human infrastructure, cause health problems, and send up spirals of carbon and soot that may encourage even more warming of the atmosphere – and thus feed back into more fires. Globally today, as much as 5 million square kilometres – an area more than half the size of the United States – burns in a given year.[25]
Throughout much of history, cultures attempted to explain nature and the properties of matter by proposing a set of four (or five)classical elements, of whichfire formed one of the components. As scientific understanding developed following theMiddle Ages, this philosophy was replaced by a set of chemical elements and their interactions. Instead, the classical elements found an equivalency in thestates of matter: solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.[27]
During the 17th century, a study of combustion was made byJan Baptist van Helmont who discovered that burning charcoal released agas sylvestris, or wild spirit.[28] This was subsequently incorporated intoPhlogiston theory byJohann Joachim Becher in 1667; a concept that would dominate alchemical thinking for nearly two centuries.[29] It wasAntoine Lavoisier who demonstrated that combustion did not involve the release of a substance, but rather something was being taken up.[28] In 1777, Lavoisier proposed a new theory of combustion based on the reaction of a material with a component of air, which he termed oxygène. By 1791, Lavoisier's chemistry concepts had been widely adopted by young scientists, and Phlogiston theory was rejected.[30]
Fire has been used for centuries as a method of torture and execution,[31] as evidenced bydeath by burning as well as torture devices such as theiron boot,[32] which could be heated over an open fire to the agony of the wearer.[33]
There are numerous modern applications of fire. In its broadest sense, fire is used by nearly every human being on Earth in a controlled setting every day. Users ofinternal combustion vehicles employ fire every time they drive. Thermalpower stations provideelectricity for a large percentage of humanity by igniting fuels such ascoal,oil ornatural gas, then using the resultant heat to boil water intosteam, which then drivesturbines.[34]
The invention ofgunpowder in China led to thefire lance, a flame-thrower weapon dating to around 1000 CE which was a precursor toprojectile weapons driven by burning gunpowder.[39] The earliest modernflamethrowers were used by infantry in theFirst World War, first used by German troops against entrenched French troops near Verdun in February 1915.[40] They were later successfully mounted on armoured vehicles in the Second World War.[41]
Incendiary bombs were dropped byAxis andAllies during the Second World War, notably onCoventry,Tokyo,Rotterdam,London,Hamburg andDresden. In the latter two cases,firestorms were deliberately caused in which a ring of fire surrounding each city was drawn inward by anupdraft created by a central cluster of fires.[44] The United States Army Air Force extensively used incendiaries against Japanese targets in the latter months of the war, devastating entire cities constructed primarily of wood and paper houses. The incendiary fluidnapalm was used in July 1944, towards the end of theSecond World War, although its use did not gain public attention until theVietnam War.[45]
Theunburnable solid remains of a combustible material left after a fire is calledclinker if itsmelting point is below the flame temperature, so that it fuses and then solidifies as it cools, andash if its melting point is above the flame temperature.[citation needed]
Fires start when aflammable or a combustible material, in combination with a sufficient quantity of anoxidizer such as oxygen gas or another oxygen-rich compound (though non-oxygen oxidizers exist, such as chlorine),[52] is exposed to a source of heat or ambienttemperature above theflash point for thefuel/oxidizer mix, and is able to sustain a rate of rapid oxidation that produces achain reaction. This is commonly called thefire tetrahedron.[53] Fire cannot exist without all of these elements in place and in the right proportions. For example, a flammable liquid will start burning only if the fuel and oxygen are in the right proportions.[52] Some fuel-oxygen mixes may require acatalyst, a substance that is not consumed, when added, in anychemical reaction during combustion, but which enables the reactants to combust more readily.[54]
Once ignited, a chain reaction must take place whereby fires can sustain their own heat by the further release of heat energy in the process of combustion and may propagate, provided there is a continuous supply of an oxidizer and fuel.[55] If the oxidizer is oxygen from the surrounding air, the presence of a force ofgravity,[56] or of some similar force caused by acceleration, is necessary to produceconvection, which removes combustion products and brings a supply of oxygen to the fire. Without gravity, a fire rapidly surrounds itself with its own combustion products and non-oxidizing gases from the air, which exclude oxygen andextinguish the fire. Because of this, the risk of fire in aspacecraft is small when it iscoasting in inertial flight.[57][58] This does not apply if oxygen is supplied to the fire by some process other than thermal convection.
Fire can beextinguished by removing any one of the elements of the fire tetrahedron.[52] Consider a natural gas flame, such as from a stove-top burner. The fire can be extinguished by any of the following:
turning off the gas supply, which removes the fuel source;
covering the flame completely, which smothers the flame as the combustion both uses the available oxidizer (the oxygen in the air) and displaces it from the area around the flame with CO2;
application of water, which removes heat from the fire faster than the fire can produce it[60] (similarly, blowing hard on a flame will displace the heat of the currently burning gas from its fuel source, to the same end); or
application of a retardant chemical such asHalon (largely banned in some countries as of 2023[update]) to the flame, which retards the chemical reaction itself until the rate of combustion is too slow to maintain the chain reaction.[61]
In contrast, fire is intensified by increasing the overall rate of combustion. Methods to do this include balancing the input of fuel and oxidizer tostoichiometric proportions,[52] increasing fuel and oxidizer input in this balanced mix, increasing the ambient temperature so the fire's own heat is better able to sustain combustion, or providing a catalyst, a non-reactant medium in which the fuel and oxidizer can more readily react.
Adiffusion flame is a mixture of reacting gases and solids emitting visible,infrared, and sometimesultraviolet light, thefrequency spectrum of which depends on thechemical composition of the burning material and intermediate reaction products. During the burning ofhydrocarbons, for example wood, or the incompletecombustion of gas,incandescent solid particles calledsoot produce the familiar red-orange glow of "fire".[62][63] This light has acontinuous spectrum. Complete combustion of gas has a dim blue color[64] due to the emission of single-wavelength radiation from various electron transitions in the excited molecules formed in the flame.
Acontrolled burn in theNorthwest Territories, showing variations in the flame color due to temperature. The hottest parts near the ground appear yellowish-white, while the cooler upper parts appear red.
The glow of a flame is complex.Black-body radiation is emitted from soot, gas, and fuel particles, though the soot particles are too small to behave like perfect blackbodies. There is alsophoton emission by de-excitedatoms andmolecules in the gases. Much of the radiation is emitted in the visible and infrared bands. The color depends on temperature for the black-body radiation, and on chemical makeup for theemission spectra.[69]
Fire is affected by gravity. Left: Flame on Earth; Right: Flame on theISS
The common distribution of a flame under normal gravity conditions depends onconvection, as soot tends to rise to the top of a general flame, as in acandle in normal gravity conditions, making it yellow. Inmicrogravity or zero gravity,[70] such as an environment inouter space, convection no longer occurs, and the flame becomes spherical, with a tendency to become more blue and more efficient (although it may go out if not moved steadily, as the CO2 from combustion does not disperse as readily in microgravity, and tends to smother the flame). There are several possible explanations for this difference, of which the most likely is that the temperature is sufficiently evenly distributed that soot is not formed and complete combustion occurs.[71]
Experiments byNASA reveal thatdiffusion flames in microgravity allow more soot to be completely oxidized after they are produced than diffusion flames on Earth, because of a series of mechanisms that behave differently in micro gravity when compared to normal gravity conditions.[72] These discoveries have potential applications inapplied science andindustry, especially concerningfuel efficiency.
Every natural ecosystem on land has its ownfire regime, and the organisms in those ecosystems are adapted to or dependent upon that fire regime. Fire creates a mosaic of differenthabitat patches, each at a different stage ofsuccession.[76] Different species of plants, animals, and microbes specialize in exploiting a particular stage, and by creating these different types of patches, fire allows a greater number of species to exist within a landscape.[77]
Fire fighting services are provided in most developed areas to extinguish or contain uncontrolled fires. Trainedfirefighters usefire apparatus, water supply resources such aswater mains andfire hydrants or they might use A and B class foam depending on what is feeding the fire.[78][79]
The early detection of a wildfire outbreak can be performed by afire lookout observing from atower constructed for that purpose. The use of these towers peaked in 1938 and has been in decline since that time; most of the fire surveillance work is now performed usinginfrared sensors and aircraft.[80]Fire suppression aircraft guided by a lookout can be used to help manage wildfires. These are primarily used in support of ground crews[81]
Controlling a fire to optimize its size, shape, and intensity is generally calledfire management, and the more advanced forms of it, as traditionally (and sometimes still) practiced by skilled cooks,blacksmiths,ironmasters, and others, are highlyskilled activities. They include knowledge of which fuel to burn; how to arrange the fuel; how to stoke the fire both in early phases and in maintenance phases; how to modulate the heat, flame, and smoke as suited to the desired application; how best to bank a fire to be revived later; how to choose, design, or modify stoves, fireplaces, bakery ovens, or industrialfurnaces; and so on. Detailed expositions of fire management are available in various books about blacksmithing, about skilledcamping ormilitary scouting, and aboutdomestic arts.[82][83][84]
Wildfire prevention programs around the world may employ techniques such aswildland fire use andprescribed orcontrolled burns.[85]Wildland fire use refers to any fire of natural causes that is monitored but allowed to burn.Controlled burns are fires ignited by government agencies under less dangerous weather conditions.[86]
Fire prevention is intended to reduce sources of ignition. Fire prevention also includes education to teach people how to avoid causing fires.[87] Buildings, especially schools and tall buildings, often conductfire drills to inform and prepare citizens on how to react to a building fire. Purposely starting destructive fires constitutesarson and is a crime in most jurisdictions.[88]
Fire has been an importance element of human culture since theLower Paleolithic.[91] Archaeological evidence demonstrates thatfire worship has been widely practiced sinceprehistory, with dedicated structures found dating from at least theChalcolithic period.Zoroastrianism originated from this practice.[92] In some societiesfire was a deity, while others viewed it as themanifestation of the divine.[93] The fire in ahearth was perceived as symbolic of the Heavenly Fire, and thus is considered a sacred component by fire worshipping cultures.[94] The origin of fire became a subject of mythology. In ancient Greek culture, the Titan–godPrometheus was responsible forstealing heavenly fire and gifting it to humanity.[93]
The use of apyre as a funerary practice dates back to at least the Ancient Roman period.[95]Cremation of corpses is a tradition long practiced in some cultures, including Hindu. After early religious resistance in some countries, in the 19th century this practice became more widespread and is now commonplace.[96] In some nations, suicide byself-immolation remains common.[97]
The symbology of fire remains important to the present day. Where wood is plentiful, thebonfire can be used for celebration purposes, in many cases as part of a tradition. An example isGuy Fawkes Night in England.[98] Thebarbecue is a fire-based cultural tradition in the United States.[99] The fiery ignition offireworks has become a modern tradition to celebrate theNew Years arrival.[100] In contrast,book burning has been used as a form of protest, whether for political, religious, or moral reasons.[101] The act of "burning ineffigy" has a similar role, as in the annualburning of Judas ritual.[102]
Humans lack an instinctual fascination with fire, yet in modern societies adults can become drawn to it out of curiosity. In societies that are dependent on daily fire use, children lose interest in fire at about age seven due to regular exposure.[103]Arson is the act of intentionally setting fire to a property. A separate but related behavior ispyromania, which is classified as animpulse-control disorder where individuals repeatedly fail to resist impulses to deliberately start fires.[104] In contrast ispyrophobia, an irrational fear of fire. Thisanxiety disorder is a less common phobia.[105]
^Fukuyama, Takao; Mukai, Nodoka; Togawa, Gaku (1 November 2019). "Dynamic behaviours of a flame as plasma in a strong electric field".Scientific Reports.9 (1): 15811.doi:10.1038/s41598-019-50537-x.hdl:10069/39515.
^Lentile, Leigh B.; Holden, Zachary A.; Smith, Alistair M. S.; Falkowski, Michael J.; Hudak, Andrew T.; Morgan, Penelope; Lewis, Sarah A.; Gessler, Paul E.; Benson, Nate C (2006). "Remote sensing techniques to assess active fire characteristics and post-fire effects".International Journal of Wildland Fire.3 (15):319–345.doi:10.1071/WF05097.S2CID724358.
^Morris, S. E.; Moses, T. A. (1987). "Forest Fire and the Natural Soil Erosion Regime in the Colorado Front Range".Annals of the Association of American Geographers.77 (2):245–54.doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.1987.tb00156.x.ISSN0004-5608.
^Jones, Timothy P.; Chaloner, William G. (1991). "Fossil charcoal, its recognition and palaeoatmospheric significance".Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.97 (1–2):39–50.Bibcode:1991PPP....97...39J.doi:10.1016/0031-0182(91)90180-Y.
^Glasspool, I. J.; Edwards, D.; Axe, L. (2004). "Charcoal in the Silurian as evidence for the earliest wildfire".Geology.32 (5):381–383.Bibcode:2004Geo....32..381G.doi:10.1130/G20363.1.
^abcBowman, D. M. J. S.; Balch, J. K.; Artaxo, P.; Bond, W. J.; Carlson, J. M.; Cochrane, M. A.; d'Antonio, C. M.; Defries, R. S.; Doyle, J. C.; Harrison, S. P.; Johnston, F. H.; Keeley, J. E.; Krawchuk, M. A.; Kull, C. A.; Marston, J. B.; Moritz, M. A.; Prentice, I. C.; Roos, C. I.; Scott, A. C.; Swetnam, T. W.; Van Der Werf, G. R.; Pyne, S. J. (2009)."Fire in the Earth system".Science.324 (5926):481–4.Bibcode:2009Sci...324..481B.doi:10.1126/science.1163886.PMID19390038.S2CID22389421.Archived from the original on 2024-05-27. Retrieved2024-01-26.
^Gowlett, J. A. J.; Wrangham, R. W. (2013). "Earliest fire in Africa: towards the convergence of archaeological evidence and the cooking hypothesis".Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa.48 (1):5–30.doi:10.1080/0067270X.2012.756754.S2CID163033909.
^O'Carroll, Eoin (5 April 2012)."Were Early Humans Cooking Their Food a Million Years Ago?".ABC News.Archived from the original on 4 February 2020. Retrieved10 January 2020.Early humans harnessed fire as early as a million years ago, much earlier than previously thought, suggests evidence unearthed in a cave in South Africa.
^abDolman, Han (March 2023). "The discovery of the Carbon Dioxide molecule".Carbon Dioxide through the Ages: From wild spirit to climate culprit. Oxford University Press. pp. 37–61.doi:10.1093/oso/9780198869412.003.0003.ISBN9780198869412.
^Black, Ernest G. (February 1927). "Torture under English Law".University of Pennsylvania Law Review and American Law Register.75 (4):344–348.doi:10.2307/3307506.JSTOR3307506.
^Melville, R. D. (April 1905). "The Use and Forms of Judicial Torture in England and Scotland".The Scottish Historical Review.2 (7):225–248.JSTOR25517609. In particular, see p. 238.
^Cheronis, Nicholas D. (August 1, 1937). "Chemical warfare in the middle ages. Kallinikos' 'prepared fire'".Journal of Chemical Education.14 (8): 360.Bibcode:1937JChEd..14..360C.doi:10.1021/ed014p360.
^Haw, Stephen G. (2013). "Cathayan Arrows and Meteors: The Origins of Chinese Rocketry".Journal of Chinese Military History.2 (1):28–42.doi:10.1163/22127453-12341243.
^Martín-Alberca, C.; et al. (March 2013). "Anionic markers for the forensic identification of Chemical Ignition Molotov Cocktail composition".Science & Justice.53 (1):49–54.doi:10.1016/j.scijus.2012.11.004.
^Patterson, Ian (February 1, 2017). "Xabier Irujo. Gernika, 1937: The Market Day Massacre".The American Historical Review.122 (1). Reno: University of Nevada Press:263–264.doi:10.1093/ahr/122.1.263.
^abcdStauffer, E.; NicDaéid, N. (2017)."Chemistry of Fire". In Houck, Max M. (ed.).Forensic Engineering. Advanced Forensic Science Series. Elsevier, Inc. pp. 137–143.ISBN978-0-12-802718-9.
^Tuśnio, Norbert; Wolny, Paweł (2016). "New Techniques and a New Approach to the Effective Extinguishing of Fully Developed Fires in Enclosed Spaces".Internal Security.8 (1).doi:10.5604/20805268.1231596.
^Trimm, D. L. (September 15, 1983). "Catalytic combustion (review)".Applied Catalysis.7 (3):249–282.doi:10.1016/0166-9834(83)80027-X.
^Gisborne, H. T. (Winter 2004)."Fundamentals of Fire Behavior".Fire Management Today.64 (1). U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service:15–23.
^Bryant, D. (May 1995). "An investigation into the effects of gravity level on rate of heat release and time to ignition".Fire and Materials.19 (3):119–126.doi:10.1002/fam.810190304.
^Lei, Baiwei; et al. (April 1, 2020). "Comparative study of single inert gas in confined space inhibiting open flame coal combustion".Fuel.265.doi:10.1016/j.fuel.2019.116976.
^Grant, G.; et al. (April 2000). "Fire suppression by water sprays".Progress in Energy and Combustion Science.26 (2):79–130.doi:10.1016/S0360-1285(99)00012-X.
^Kim, Tae-Sun; et al. (August 2024). "Thermal characteristics of fire extinguishing agents in compartment fire suppression".Science Progress.107 (3).doi:10.1177/003685042412634.PMID39096047.
^Dixon, Harold B.; Edgar, E. C. (1906). "The Atomic Weight of Chlorine: An Attempt to Determine the Equivalent of Chlorine by Direct Burning with Hydrogen".Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Containing Papers of a Mathematical or Physical Character.205:169–200.Bibcode:1906RSPTA.205..169D.doi:10.1098/rsta.1906.0005.
^Grosse, A. V.; Kirshenbaum, A. D. (October 1955). "The Premixed Hydrogen-Fluorine Flame and its Burning Velocity".Journal of the American Chemical Society.77 (19):5012–5013.Bibcode:1955JAChS..77.5012G.doi:10.1021/ja01624a018.
^Badem, Abdullah (2024). "The Effects of Fire in Human Life and in the Cuisine from the Paleolithic to the Modern Age".Journal of Ecohumanism.3 (6):269–293.doi:10.62754/joe.v3i6.4002.
^Rakhimov, Komil Akramovich. "Ancient Bacterian Bronze Age fire worship".Research Journal of History.2 (5):71–77.doi:10.37547/history-crjh-02-05-17.
^Tashak, V. I. (2003). "Hearths at the Podzvonkaya Palaeolithic site: Evidence suggestive of the spirituality of early populations of the Trans-Baikal region".Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia.3 (15):70–78.
^Warpole, Ken (2009). "Living with the Dead: Burial, Cremation and Memory".Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review.98 (392):447–456.JSTOR25660708.
^Rezaie, Leeba; Hosseini, Seyed Ali; Rassafiani, Mehdi; Najafi, Farid; Shakeri, Jalal; Khankeh, Hamid Reza (March 2014). "Why self-immolation? A qualitative exploration of the motives for attempting suicide by self-immolation".Burns.40 (2):319–327.doi:10.1016/j.burns.2013.06.016.
^Pope, R. J.; Marshall, A. M.; O'Kane, B. O. (November 2016). "Observing UK Bonfire Night pollution from space: analysis of atmospheric aerosol".Weather.71 (11):288–291.doi:10.1002/wea.2914.
Pyne, Stephen J.Fire : a brief history (University of Washington Press, 2001).
Pyne, Stephen J.World fire : the culture of fire on earth (1995)online
Pyne, Stephen J.Tending fire : coping with America's wildland fires (2004)online
Pyne, Stephen J.Awful splendour : a fire history of Canada (2007)online
Pyne, Stephen J.Burning bush : a fire history of Australia (1991)online
Pyne, Stephen J.Between Two Fires: A Fire History of Contemporary America (2015)
Pyne, Stephen J.California: A Fire Survey (2016)
Safford, Hugh D., et al. "Fire ecology of the North American Mediterranean-climate zone." inFire ecology and management: Past, present, and future of US forested ecosystems (2021): 337–392. re California and its neighborsonline
