
Fighting Fires with Fire Grenades - curtis
https://99percentinvisible.org/article/stop-drop-roll-throw-fighting-fires-fire-grenades/
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everdev
There's a firefighting documentary on Netflix and it's shocking how manual and
inefficient the firefighting process seems.

A dozen guys load up in a helicopter and drop in next to a brush fire with
rakes and shovels and start digging a trench. That's the grand plan, digging a
barrier by hand with hand tools.

Or, pay thousands to fly and operate firefighting planes that sometimes miss
the target and other times the fire is so huge their payload doesn't make a
dent.

And the price tag for the California fire season runs in the billions. Seems
like an area ripe for disruption.

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extrapickles
The problem is that traditional heavy equipment takes too long to get into
position due to its bulk and weight. Basically, someone needs to make a
backhoe that is better than 4-20 people with Pulaskis. In addition, it would
need to take up less room, weight less, and cost less than the number of
people it replaces.

There are a bunch of other things that can help control fires, but most of
them are not very flashy and some run into problems of NIMBYs torpedoing the
control measure.

Some measures that can help:

    
    
      1. Mandate under eave water sprayers in higher risk areas (a fair amount of houses destroyed are caused by embers from main fire). This is probably the easiest to disrupt.
      2. Do more controlled burns (especially in areas that have not burned in decades. Huge NIMBY objection to this as they claim it will damage property values or harm children)
      3. Require more fire-resistant vegetation or ground cover around residential areas (bare ground is bad as well as lots of trees and large bushes)
      4. Require more fire resistant building materials and techniques for roofs, decks, outdoor furniture, etc.

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classicsnoot
Off topic, but how do i put things in list format in an HN comment? If there
is a guide feel free to link. You make some excellent points. One of your
points (3) could be accomplished in a small way by people just going Johnny
Appleseed 2.0 and seeding fire prone areas with the proper vegetation without
asking.

~~~
theoh

      Leading spaces induce
      this style of formatting.
    

It is difficult to read on mobile.

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userbinator
The use of carbon tet as a fire suppressant was actually the start of a pretty
long history of halocarbons as fire suppressants in general:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromotrifluoromethane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromotrifluoromethane)

The pyrolysis byproducts were still quite toxic, but they were very effective
at putting out fires since they chemically inhibit the oxidation reaction.

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softgrow
There is also the inverse. Helicopter mounted guns that throw out fire
starting balls. At fire fighting trade shows you get both ends of the
spectrum.

