Grass Fires/Forest Fires

[smketer]

Hi guys as I work for the USFS we use a product called Thermo Gel www.thermogel.com, we (guys at station) have been talking about house fires and urban interface fires, and if we have a house fire, and we spray the house next to it with the Thermo gel, what or how well would this work. I wanted to find out if any other departments are doing this and how well it works.

I know that there are other gels out there to use, but we USFS/BLM/CDF are only using the Thermo Gel stuff, before we were using barricade but they took it all away because its was not approved.

Stay Safe,

[NJFFSA16]

FYI...."Good Morning America" (ABC Network) will have a live demonstration of a fire gel product...today, July 9th.

The segment, as described to me:

Segment Description:

Ron Hazelton and Lt. John Bartlett (inventor) from the Palm Beach Fire Dept will demonstrate a product called Fire Barricade. This is a gel that is applied to homes to prevent the structures from burning. The primary use is for homes that are susceptible to wild fires.



Demo: Two identical doghouses are placed side by side with about a foot or so space between them. One is coated with the Barricade gel using the home applicator system that operates with a standard garden hose. The other house is not coated but we may spray it down with water just before we light the flame to represent a homeowner spraying his house before a wildfire strikes. (It will still burn quite easily.)



We apply the flame to both houses simultaneously and one burns up and the gel coated one is completely undamaged. We then rinse the gel off using the same garden hose to show its ease of clean-up.



We will also demonstrate the fire resistive nature of disposable diapers using a hand-held propane torch (which led to the discovery of this product).



We will have the Fairfield Fire Dept. standing by to assist.

[mcaldwell]

We demo'd this stuff a couple of years ago in Kemano (a very large live burn training initiative). It was VERY impressive! We lit a detatched garage with a very high fireload (furniture/wood/etc), and coated the house less than 3' away with the gel. The wooden garage burned intensely and completely to the ground (for 30+ minutes), but there was NO damage to the house and the product did not need to be reapplied.

Besides exposures, I think this stuff would be great for interface, because it takes hours to break down, and can be applied to a high-risk house and left alone while the firefront passes. A homeowner could apply it as well with limited equipment.

The only downside then was cost (both the gel and the custom equipment). I can't remember exactly what they were charging back then, but I do remember our jaws collectively dropped when they told us. We all told them to call us back when they price came down.

[smketer]

As we have GSA here in the states for equipment, does canada have anything like that?

Well one way to think about it, how much is a house worth, how much is a firefighter worth, i would not put my team of guys at a house to protect it, i rather just spray it and get out.

Stay Safe,

[Dushore5741]

When I was a member of the Fire Watchers Crew, there was an advertisment in the newsletter for a foam that was loaded into an old "hand can". The kind you over turn to discharge It was called Artic Ice. You could spray a house down w/ it and a forest fire would burn around it, and not even singe the house. I think they used it in Florida during the wild fires. It was very impressive, it was only sold by the pallet, so we never bought it. But the demonstration provided, they put out a whole car fire w/ about a pint of this stuff in 3 gallons of water.