1. ATV-Mounted Power Torch
Posted on 08/15/2008 11:17:57 AM PDT by yankeedame
1. ATV-Mounted Power Torch
Sometimes, the best way to stop fires is to start them. Since the 1970s, fire managers have used so-called prescribed fires to burn up dry, flammable fuel before it accumulates into something that could start a much more dangerous conflagration.
Determining when and how to set a prescribed fire is a complicated science. "A lot of the grassland areas have lots of acreage that's got to be burned by a certain deadline. You can't just do it any old day," says smoke jumper Brandyn Harvey, who worked for several years on a "hotshot" crew that set prescribed fires throughout the western United States
A quick way to spread intentional fires is with a power torch that's mounted on an all-terrain vehicle (ATV). "When you have to cover a lot of ground in a short period of time, the power torch is definitely the way to go," Harvey says. "Otherwise you have to walk around with a little hand torch."
Harvey estimates that ATV-mounted power torches hold about 20 gal. of fuel—a significant advantage over the 2-quart fuel containers used with hand torches.
==============================
2. Firewatch Helicopters
Take one Vietnam-era army attack helicopter; strip it of its weapons, add lasers, cameras and infrared sensors and you'll get the Cobra Firewatch—the slickest firefighting machine on earth.
In 1996, the U.S. Army retired 25 of its Cobra helicopters, able to reach speeds of 160 mph. The Forest Service eagerly accepted the hand-me-downs and refitted them with an arsenal of high-tech gadgets. The new Cobras don't extinguish fires by themselves. Their main purpose is to relay information about the direction and strength of a blaze to ground crews and to help larger planes make more accurate water or fire-retardant drops.
The Firewatch's infrared thermal imager can detect the heat of a wildfire even through thick smoke. Its low-light and color cameras can pick up fine resolution images of the fire, and then its transmission equipment can send those images—in real time—to firefighting crews up to 30 miles away. Also, the Cobra can direct larger water haulers by providing precise GPS coordinates.
=============================
3. Psychic Software
(Screenshot courtesy of Prometheus)
Firefighters have clear vision. But are they psychic?
Given the right mix of weather conditions—high temperatures, low humidity, high winds and a bolt of lightning—a wildfire can spark and spread up to 40 miles in a single day, much faster than the first wave of firefighters trying to contain it.
"Usually, we're not worried about where the current fire is," says Chris Worrell, a fire training officer in the Florida Division of Forestry. "The question we have to ask is: where is the next fire going to be? It's a constant game of catch-up."
That's why some of the newest firefighting technology aims to figure out where that next fire will hit. "Before, say, 1980, we used pretty rough-and-ready methods," says Marty Alexander, a veteran researcher in the Canadian Forest Service who specializes in modeling fire behavior. "Now we can actually make some sound predictions."
Take Prometheus, a software program made by the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. Prometheus runs sophisticated mathematical models based on a variety of climate and ecological factors to calculate the most likely place and time for a fire to begin. As well as hourly updates of temperature, humidity and wind speed, the models take into account the volume and moisture content of whatever tree species is burning.
This data can easily be merged with local geographic and topographic information so that the precise location, size and trajectory of the most likely fires can pop up on a map. The maps and data are available from a central Web site and may be downloaded on firefighting crews' laptops or at fire operations centers throughout Canada. "Now on a computer you can actually show what the perimeter of land burned would look like after 1 hour, or 2 hours. It helps in all kinds of scenarios," Alexander says.
=============================
4. Flying Fire Watchers
(Photograph courtesy of NASA via Google)
Many fires are detected by regular patrolling of likely hot spots by single-engine manned aircraft. But in the last few years, communities frequently plagued by wildfire have turned to remote technologies that can detect dry areas, smoldering fires and the infrared signatures of telltale carbon dioxide emissions.
Last summer, NASA and the U.S. Forest Service started experimenting with remote sensing technology on unmanned aircraft (rather than on satellites). The sensors could monitor the spread of a specific fire as it happens, and send the data back to geographers in near real time.
They tested these systems in October, with mixed results, when raging fires broke out in San Diego County, California. The system worked perfectly until large clouds got in the way of the infrared sensor. The system's developers are now hard at work addressing these problems. The plane system "would expand our capability a great deal, because right now we have a limited infrastructure built for infrared technology," Henderson, of the US Forest Service, says.
The newest satellite technology is called the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, a sophisticated instrument used on two satellites orbiting the Earth. MODIS holds a variety of sensors that detect electromagnetic radiation—whether visible light, microwaves or infrared heat. MODIS systems scan the entire earth's surface every one to two days. Once that data on smoke and fire radiation is sent back to earth, NASA geographers merge it with maps of local roads, topography, vegetation and population density, and disseminate it to firefighting operations across the world.
"We can access the satellite information over the Web—it's updated twice daily," says Lachlan McCaw, a bush fire research scientist in Western Australia's Department of Environment and Conservation. He says satellite technology is especially useful for detecting fires in Western Australia, which is largely unpopulated and difficult to monitor with planes. Still, MODIS only picks up relatively large fires, and can't show how fire radiation is changing from one hour to the next.
=============================
5. The Concrete Pounder
(Video still via YouTube)
The time spent tearing down a concrete wall with electric power saws, drills and jack hammers is a serious limiting factor in rescuing people trapped inside a burning building. But defense contractor Raytheon has recently developed a prototype that could pound walls in 13 minutes—19 minutes faster than doing the job with electric power tools.
The prototype, called the Controlled Impact Rescue Tool (CIRT), works by firing blank ammunition cartridges into the wall; the resulting shock waves cause the wall to crumble. Two people can carry the 100-pound system without tripping over power cords. Raytheon developed the tool for the Department of Homeland Security but hasn't yet determined how much the device will cost.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.