Technically Speaking
Wildland firefighting has come along way since the days when the Pulaski tool was considered new technology. The fire community has crossed new frontiers not only in hand tools, but also in transportation, water and retardant delivery, communications and computer usage, and personal protective equipment, to name a few. At the time, these steps may have gone unnoticed or seemed incremental, but together have changed the world we work in.
The technological advances that have been made during my career in wildland fire are astounding. Just look at the field of communications; less than 100 years ago, we were stringing bare copper wire through tree branches to hand-cranked phones. Can you imagine being on a fire now without cellular or satellite phones in those most remote areas? I can remember when a large cell phone on your hip was a rare sight. How about computer communications? I was there in 1983 when we first moved from using TI-59 hand calculators for making fire behavior predictions to an early version of the BEHAVE program on a landline-linked data general computer terminal at an actual live wildland fire. Now computers are everywhere. Manufacturers have made tremendous strides with fire-resistant PPE, and even the idea of structural firefighters using lightweight Nomex or other protective gear when responding to a wildland fire is no longer a radical idea. New wildland fire technology is ubiquitous and driven by our need to know more about hazardous working environments to keep ourselves safe.
Of course, the wildland and structural fire communities usually have adopted new technology discovered for some other societal use. Firefighters have been good at looking for and adapting new technologies, and we need to encourage that trend. Continued advances in the uses of satellite imagery, thermal imaging, unmanned aerial vehicles, and computer modeling such as smoke emission and particulate projections are examples of this. Occasionally something new is developed specifically within the fire community for some unique aspect of the fire community; the personal fire shelter is a good example.
U.S. wildland fire operations always have had a close affinity with the military, which frequently has developed tools for its own use that eventually trickle down into our fire toolbox. Some of it has been around for years and our adaptive usage has been slow. Thermal-imaging research during the 1960s and '70s eventually was seen on the fireline. An early experimental attempt at GPS technology on wildland fire for real-time tracking of engines and other resources was made during the late 1980s. A decade later we started using GPS and GIS technology to make paper maps for fire-planning purposes. The military has taken its early GIS and GPS research to new heights. Imagine if, on a wildland or structural fire, all of the overhead and all suppression resources had real time information about the exact location of all other suppression resources. Imagine if everyone had current information showing fire preplans, structures, structure defensibility rankings, road and other infrastructure maps, road conditions, and fuel break locations, as well as real-time weather forecasts, red-flag warnings and fire behavior forecasts. How about live video of the fire from an orbiting aircraft displayed on a screen in the cabs of vehicles? All of this is technically possible in today's world to enhance firefighter safety and to get the job done.
All technological advances cost money; budgets frequently limit our adaptation and usage of new ideas. Not all new ideas are good ideas and may fade with time if their worth isn't proven. But these ideas are not just gee-whiz concepts; they work now and they can and are saving lives.
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