Technology Can Reduce Losses from Wildfires: Suppression (Part I)

As the typical peak of wildfire season approaches on the calendar, I’ve been thinking about the continual search for technological solutions for reducing losses from wildfires. This search has been very intense for the last several years led by public and private entities. This search is understandable and, at the same time, frustrating.

The emphasis on technology should eclipse the need for other solutions. In fact, it cannot disregard other elements for successful mitigation solutions: sound codes and ordinances; effective and efficient suppression techniques; remote sensing for early warning; and the involvement of people in preparing their properties for wildfire season. As a starting point, let’s take a look at each in a series of blogs to give you time to consider each and share your views.

First, let’s look at the possibilities of more effective and efficient fire suppression techniques and practices. Traditional suppression attempts to contain and extinguish wildfires and is effective in over 95-97% of the time. This is a consistent performance record of an approach that has been around for over 100 years. We realize the missteps and unintended consequences of aggressively extinguishing every fire in forests and perhaps an over-reactive correction to a “natural fire” approach of the last couple of decades. The biggest problem we face now is the extreme conditions that contribute to the other small percentage of the fires that result in the greatest loss of homes and lives. The recent involvement of private insurers hiring fire crews to protect their residential risks in the path of wildfires is hardly a new approach, but it does represent a shift in resident expectations and the realities of inadequate public fire protection, overwhelmed when faced with too much fire, not enough fire fighters, dwindling resources, and long travel distances.

The conclusion then must be to move the fire suppression capabilities closer to the things we need to protect – the homes in the path of a wildfire is the focus. But simply applying the existing paradigm to a new location may not result in different outcomes. First, a person must be involved – someone who knows how to use extinguishing equipment or how to apply preemptive foam or gels to a house at the most beneficial time, and a reliance on equipment that may never be checked or tested until the fire is heading their way.  However, if the person or persons were trained and equipped and present when needed then a fire brigade of residents could be very effective in preparing homes for an approaching wildfire before they sought shelter or evacuated the area.

Relying on imaginative futuristic solutions such as equipping fire trucks with giant fans or jet engines to blow the fire in a different direction and exploding boxes on tops of houses that release encapsulating fire resistive covers may be too future-oriented and presents several physical difficulties in implementation. While looking between the obvious and the extreme, we should not discount the most acceptable extinguishing agent of choice – water. In order to prevent the ignition of dry grasses, dead leaves, and pine needles near homes from the most prevalent culprit – air blown embers – we need to slightly raise the moisture levels. Any camper trying to start a campfire early in the morning understands that a light dew is more than enough to hinder cooking efforts. If this is so, why not apply a water spray on and around each house before the embers and/or flames reach it? A system could use an irrigation system model or better – use very little water in high pressure nozzles for greater distribution. The reason for this suggestion is that the technology is already available, it could be activated by person a day or two before the fire gets closer or just before evacuation, it could be enhanced by water additives and distribution nozzles, it could be very low cost, and it represents a fundamental change in responsibility for fire safety.

While I’m certain that a major shift in suppression techniques is required and could greatly outperform the current more expensive approaches, we, as a society, must be creatively realistic in understanding the physical threat of wildfires and meeting the challenges of prevention, mitigation, and response in new ways.  Maybe we can even have an “app” for that.

Coming up next blog:  Remote sensing technologies can save lives…