This video, featuring Shirley Zylstra, the Wildland Fire Chemicals Program Leader for the U.S. Forest Service, demonstrates the effectiveness of long term fire retardant dropped by air tankers, and occasionally by helicopters. In the video that was uploaded to YouTube yesterday, Ms. Zylstra explains how the chemical works even after the water evaporates by interfering with the combustion process.
The video is extremely low resolution, 240p, and looks like it was recorded with a flip phone, but it gets the message across.
2 Comments
Good video, obviously new since it has one of Erickson’ s tankers in it. I suspect it’s a response to the GAP report that was asking for proof the Aviation program has any value. And, IMO, good on the USFS for not ignoring it. I hope they do similar demonstrations with actual plots in real world fuels, at a larger scale. Doing the math in my head, it looked like greater than a 50% reduction in rate of spread in excelsior.
Dang autocorrect! GAO Report.
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