I
actually like this idea. It is a natural adjunct to controlled burns
which needs to be implemented almost everywhere anyway in order to
eliminate fuel buildup. We also need proactive forest grooming, but
that is normally asking for too much.
Any
area adjacent to human occupation needs to be burned back
substantially to provide a natural fire break. That is generally
not been done in too many locales. This is meant to strip recent
debris out while retaining the maturing forest. It obviously must be
done when moisture content is just right and often enough to avoid
too much buildup.
Thus
most natural fires will be started outside that obvious window of
opportunity. These need to be quelled. Standby tankers we already
have and early warning can make it efficient.
Thus satellite and
drone surveillance combined with some immediate reaction capability
is sound.
Too
many folks feel free to build any place they like without
commissioning a study on the fire, flood and seismic risk. This also
needs to end.
I
recall visiting a friend whose ridge top aerie looked out over tinder
dry ponderosa pine country in Colorado. It was difficult in winter
and scary in the summer. Otherwise it was beautiful.
Proposal
to Eliminate Forest Fires Completely
Over
the past few days I’ve been listening to news reports about the
devastating fires burning in Colorado.
Record
heat, high winds, low humidity, and large amounts of beetle-killed
trees have created “perfect storm” conditions for multiple
wildfires to rage across the State.
At
the same time that our hearts and prayers go out to all of the
victims of these tragic fire, I’m also convinced that none of these
fires should have gotten to this point. Here’s why.
During
the first few minutes, between the time when a fire first starts and
when it reaches a point of being out of control, is a containment
window where only a few gallons of water or a few pounds of fire
retardant is necessary to put the evil genie back into its bottle.
Using
a fleet of surveillance drones, equipped with special infrared
cameras, fires can be spotted during the earliest moments of a
containment window, signaling a fleet of extinguisher drones to douse
the blaze before anything serious happens.
Drones
specifically designed for extinguishing forest fires have the
potential to eliminate virtually 100% of the devastating fires that
blanket newspaper headlines every summer.
Naturally
there’s a downside to eliminating forest fires altogether, so how
should we proceed?
How
do we measure the true costs of a forest fire?
The
True Cost of Forest Fires
In
2012 the U.S. Forest Service had a budget of $948 million for fire
suppression, a decrease of nearly $500 million from 2011.
In
the U.S., wildfires burned an average of 6.9 million acres per year
from 2002-2011, almost double the average acreage of the previous
decade. Some of this can be attributed to factors such as beetle-kill
trees, an increasingly mobile society, urbanization of mountain
communities, etc.
A
2010 report titled “The True Cost of Wildfire in the Western U.S.”
published by the Western Forestry Leadership Coalition challenged
traditional methods for calculating the cost of forest fires.
They
concluded, “Fire suppression costs, while often considered
synonymous with the full costs of a wildfire, are only a fraction of
the true costs associated with a wildfire event. Synthesis of case
studies in the report reveals a range of total wildfire costs
anywhere from 2 to 30 times greater than the reported suppression
costs.”
One
example they used was the June 2002 Hayman Fire which erupted in the
highly populated Front Range corridor south of Denver, Colorado.
Burning 137,759 acres, it was, at the time, the largest fire in state
history. Four counties were directly impacted by the fire: Jefferson,
Park, Douglas, and Teller.
Immediate
impacts of the fire included the destruction of 132 residences, one
commercial building and 466 outbuildings, with an estimated fire
suppression cost of over $42 million.
After
a thorough investigation of the fire by the U.S. Forestry Service,
the true costs were re-calculated as follows:
- $42,279,000 – Total suppression expenses, including USFS, state, and county expenses, some of which were ultimately reimbursed by FEMA.
- $135,548,834 – Total direct costs included property losses, utility losses, and USFS facility and resource losses. (Includes suppression expenses)
- $39,930,000 – Rehabilitation expenses included costs incurred by USFS emergency rehabilitation programs, Denver water, US Geological Survey (USGS) mapping, and USFS restoration.
- $2,691,601 – Impact costs, incurred after the fire was extinguished, included tax revenue losses and business losses, plus reduced value of the surviving structures within the fire area.
- $29,529,614 – Special costs recorded were asthma victims, special health cases, and losses to wilderness values.
All
told, the costs for the Hayman Fire topped $207 million. Widely
reported suppression costs only accounted for 20% of the total.
Using
rough calculations, last years $1 billion fire suppression budget, at
roughly 20% of the total would indicate a true cost in excess of $5
billion/year.
State
of the Art Infrared Technology
In
the late 1980s, I was an engineer working as part of an IBM team to
build a mobile satellite command and control center for monitoring
missile launches from space. This contract was part of Reagan’s
“Star Wars” missile defense system.
Whenever
a missile was launched, the heat plume coming out of the back of the
rocket produces a distinct heat signature instantly detectable by
satellites tens of thousands of miles away with infrared sensors.
The
technology we were using over 25 years ago could instantly detect
missile launches, anywhere on earth, within seconds of the launch.
I
can only assume today’s technology is hundreds of times more
precise than anything we were working with back then.
The
above photo was taken with thermal-infrared imaging sensors on NASA’s
Ikhana unmanned research aircraft in 2007 over the Harris Fire in San
Diego County in Southern California.
That
same technology could be adjusted to detect forest fires at a very
early stage.
Massachusetts
State Police released video taken of Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar
Tsarnaev’s hiding spot after he was discovered in a boat parked in
a Watertown, MA resident’s backyard.
This
image was taken with a thermal camera mounted to a helicopter.
Bluesky
is a UK company specializing in aerial imaging. They recently
purchased a state of the art airborne mapping system that included a
LiDAR (Light Imaging Detection and Ranging) system with integrated
thermal sensors and high-resolution cameras.
Onboard
thermal sensors record infrared measurements capable of showing heat
loss in buildings and monitoring pipelines. However, this same
technology can be modified to work on flying drones to monitor fire
activity on forestlands.
Oil
exploration drone used in Norway
Aerial
drone technology is advancing exponentially and much of what’s in
use today will be museum pieces in five years.
Whether
thermal scanners are mounted on satellites, high altitude aircraft,
low attitude drones, or some combination of these, monitoring
hotspots and instantly determining the danger level is well within
our grasp.
The
“can-we-should-we” debate
Certainly
not all fires are bad. For year we have debated whether to let nature
take its course or have us intervene.
In
2012 the U.S. Forest Service, which manages over 35 million acres of
forests, made a major policy shift, deciding to intervene on all
fires, something environmentalists contend will cause significant
long-term damage.
As
an example, the Northern Rockies have a long history of wilderness
fire, and records indicate most wildfires, when allowed to burn
naturally, stay within wilderness boundaries and cost little to
manage. Because the wilderness areas are remote and mostly surrounded
by other public lands, escaped fires don’t threaten many
structures.
The
two other major federal agencies charged with managing public lands –
the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service – so
far have not followed the Forest Service’s lead.
So
if we have the capability of spotting fires very early and putting
them out, is that preferable to letting them burn? Do we need to
craft new policies regarding when and where fires should burn vs.
having us intervene?
As
we add entire new toolsets to our fire suppression arsenal, these
decisions become far more difficult. Who gets to decide, and how
liable are they for making a bad decision?
Illustration
of a fire extinguisher drone
Final
Thoughts
I
began this line of thinking looking for a solution to the wildfires
we’re currently experiencing here in my home state of Colorado.
Admittedly,
managing a 24/7-drone fleet over our massively huge forestlands will
be no small undertaking. Surveillance drones will likely be separate
from fire-suppression drones.
Extinguishing
a fire under several layers of tree canopy will also be a challenge.
Every kind of tree will likely require a different navigation
strategy, and some densely covered grounds may be entirely
unreachable until it’s too late.
Operating
drones day and night through inclement conditions like wind, hail,
and rain will require an enormous effort. But so does a full-frontal
attack on a fire by smokejumpers, bucket-bearing helicopters, and
slow lumbering slurry bombers that each dumped more than 2,000
gallons of red chemical fire retardant on a formerly pristine
mountainside.
New
technology rarely fixes everything and it’s easy to see some of the
downside here. But doing nothing is also not an option.
Starting
with only a portion of the combined budgets of the U.S. Forest
Service, Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service
could create a significant enough pilot project to prove its
viability.
Knowing
that we have this new capability is an obvious first step. So where
do we go from here? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
By Futurist
Thomas Frey
2 comments:
Great!
2 students a couple of years ago created an invention that STOPS fire in its tracks using sound waves. Yet, nothing came of this new tech. I suppose that it may have had a potential impact of later putting out of business all the current fire extinguisher companies! As I can't find ANYTHING about it when searching.
That's the "name of the game" here on Earth. When ever a new gadget is invented, & then becomes a HUGE Industry. There are over a dozen PROVEN Cancer Cures! All natural too! BUT, a HUGE threat to the "Industry". So, they get suppressed, so many other people can 'keep their jobs, searching for a cure'. The "fire fighting INDUSTRY" is no different.
Now, back to the sound wave fire suppressor. How about, instead of using speakers, use a laser as a conduit & pipe the sound waves via a laser?? Lasers are used this way for many other applications. N.A.S.A. does this to send information from satellites, millions of miles away, back to Earth...
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