Does anyone do backfires anymore?? Set fires that you can control. Deny the larger fire fuel and it will go out.
Always laughed in the western movies when they would show the wagon train racing like mad to outrun the fire. That was B.S. They just threw a match downwind, waited for an area to burn clear and then parked in it.
Certainly can't be done within a city. Maybe in a forest fire.
And not in high wind situations. Remember Los Alamos?
They are using the mile roads in the same way they would use back fires, and from what I can see on the local news it is working.