Fire

Learn how to combat fires in SimCity 2000! Discover the causes, prevention strategies, and effective methods to extinguish blazes before they destroy your city.

Fires in SimCity 2000 are a real pain, but don't worry, they're usually manageable if you know what to do! When you see those flames licking up from a tile, it means something on it – like trees, buildings, or even rubble – is burning. The fire will keep going until all that fuel is gone, but by then, it's probably spread to nearby tiles. If you let it get out of control, it can wipe out your whole city. Fires can pop up randomly, but they're more likely to happen if:

• You don't have any fire departments.
• There's a lot of trees and rubble lying around.
• It's super hot (high temperatures).
• Rioters are causing trouble.
• Your airports are poorly placed, which can lead to crashes that sometimes start fires.

If you can keep those conditions in check, you'll probably be fine. But if a fire does break out, you need to act fast!

Here's the plan:

1. First, pause the game immediately. This is crucial!
2. Next, you need to demolish anything surrounding the fire – buildings, trees, roads, rubble, you name it. This creates a firebreak.
3. For those small, one or two-tile fires, you can try surrounding them with fire dispatches. Each fire station gives you one dispatch, and you can have up to 33. Keep in mind, if you place a 34th dispatch, it'll remove the very first one you placed to make room.
4. Once you think you've got all the fires contained, set your simulator speed to 'Turtle'. Watch carefully to make sure no fires are still spreading. If you keep hearing explosions long after you thought you'd put them out, it means one of them is still active.
5. You'll know you've won the battle when the game plays new music and a newspaper headline pops up announcing the end of the event.
6. After the fires are out, it's time to rebuild! Reconstruct any destroyed roads and power lines. Don't worry about zoning; those should still be intact even if the buildings on them burned down.

PlayStation Note: In the PlayStation version, there's a neat trick: if a fire has completely destroyed a tile, you can actually plop a pond right on it to make the fire disappear instantly!