4 ms·

Silly question, but I need to know. Could this help slow done rapidly advancing forest fires? Maybe if it could be used to "split" them into smaller fires?

• dredmorbius 4y ago
  Almost certainly not except in very limited cases. Big Wind is designed for reasonably contained fires, often fuel-fed as with oil or gas well fires. There, if you can extinguish the immediate flame, you've got a chance at capping the well, cutting off the fuel, and preventing further combustion. Wildfires are more akin to a battle front, or in their worst cases, a literal storm of fire which behaves unpredictably and doesn't simply advance across terrain but can skip and jump, creating tremendous winds in the process. Fire tornados in recent Northern California fires picked up and tossed trucks and heavy equipment, killing several people in that process. Wildfires also tend to advance not simply as a flame front but through blown embers, which can carry the fire foreward 100s of metres, or even kilometres, from the primary flame front. Combatting is more a matter of saving people and property --- evacuations and "treatment" (clearing brush, foaming or gelling walls and roofs, possibly setting sprinklers and soaking ground and surfaces), "fuel denial" through brush-clearing, cutting fire lines, and back-burning, and laying suppressant through aerial attack. Fire lines may stretch for kilometers, with crew deployed along them. Methods used are far more strategic than tactical. Wendover Productions did a pretty good "How Fighting Wildfires Works" video four years ago: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=EodxubsO8EI https://yewtu.be/watch?v=EodxubsO8EI