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High-tech firefighting: what's hot now, what's on drawing board

Every year wildfires scorch millions of acres of US land and cost the nation billions of dollars. We still know little about how wildland fires spread, and they can take weeks to bring under control. Here's a look at seven cutting-edge technologies that are helping to fill in the gaps in firefighting capability.

7. Timed precision drops

Damon Arthur/The Record Searchlight/AP
A firefighter practices smoke-jumping at a training session, April 17, 2014, at the US Forest Service facility at the Redding Municipal Airport in Redding, Calif.

Even the most sophisticated aerial firefighting technology cannot replace the need for firefighters on the ground. The US Forest Service has dropped "smoke jumpers" into forest fires since 1940. These brave souls parachute from airplanes into the heart of a blaze, usually long before ground crews can access the area.

Once on the ground, smoke jumpers need certain equipment, such as chain saws and crosscut saws, to work and protect themselves. That equipment arrives by separate parachutes. When dropping equipment, pilots must maneuver their planes low enough to reduce the risk that the cargo will get carried away in high winds – and that can be dangerous for the pilots, said Keith Windell, acting fire, aviation, and residues program leader at the USFS Missoula Technology and Development Center in Montana, in an interview with National Geographic.

The Forest Service is currently testing a parachute equipped with a timer that would enable the crew onboard the plane to drop the cargo from a higher altitude and delay opening of the parachute until it falls closer to the drop location, Mr. Windell said.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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