In 1963, phosphate-based fire retardant became the first to be approved by the United States Forest Service for use in aerial wildfire attack. Over the next 60 years, phosphates have proven to be effective in helping the USFS and other fire management agencies around the world to protect property and save lives.

But, why phosphate? In this presentation, Jean-Luc Kassabian with Perimeter Solutions, will review the history of aerial wildfire suppression and discuss the science behind what makes phosphate the most effective fire retardant chemical available today. During the presentation, he will analyze the results of fire retardant tests dating back more than 80 years that compare the efficacy of phosphate against numerous other chemicals, including borate, magnesium chloride, phosphoric acid, and half a dozen others. Kassabian will highlight what researchers found in each of these studies, discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the tested chemicals, and explain how the results from these various tests led to phosphate becoming the industry standard for fire retardant production for decades.

Today’s phosphate-based fire retardants continue to help firefighters prevent the spread of wildfires. Kassabian will discuss current fire retardant technology and take a look into the future to educate attendees on how we can improve all aspects of wildland firefighting, helping the audience to understand what we need to do to ensure future success with wildfire prevention, protection and suppression efforts, as climate change and other factors continue to intensify the dangers presented by wildfires.

Objectives:

Reducing the uncertainty generated by the presence of storms in the area of influence of the fire, caused by the possibility of sudden spreads that may result in risky situations for the operation, through the identification of these scenarios

Methods:

Several recent cases of wildfires with associated storm phenomena that have taken place in the Valencian Community, Spain (Llutxent 2018, Atzeneta del Maestrat 2020 and Soneja 2021) have been selected. These wildfires have undergone drastic changes in the spread of the fire, generating risky situations for the firefighters.
A detailed study of the evolution of each fire and the variables that have influenced its spread has been carried out, with special emphasis on the meteorological variables that accompany the storm episodes.

Results:

The analysis of the particularities of these fires has allowed relating fire behavior to the influence of storms, resulting in the elaboration of storm monitoring protocols, identification of warning flags and risk information to the operative.

Conclusions:

Being able to identify fire scenarios with associated storm phenomena, through the analysis of recent cases where a notable change in fire behavior has been observed, is essential to reduce the uncertainty generated in these situations, avoiding that sudden spreads result in risky situations for the operation.

The work of wildland firefighters is characterized by being carried out in conditions that imply intense physical effort, in extreme environments and where the inherent nature of the job often involves exposure to changing and dangerous working conditions. In such scenarios, physiological and mental stress increases and can rapidly deteriorate the health or operational capabilities of the personnel involved. Consequently, a system that monitors their actions and provides real-time and actionable information without obstructing their operational capability is needed. The EU–funded Project SIXTHSENSE aims to develop a wearable device for real-time monitoring of wildland firefighters' physical and cognitive status and provide information through tactile biofeedback. The system will allow the early detection of those risk factors that could lead to a rapid deterioration of health or operational capabilities by implementing predictive measures based on physiological parameters. This innovative wearable health monitoring system data enables first responders to detect risk factors early on and allows real-time monitoring of all deployed wildland firefighters. This paper is an introduction to the overall concept of the project and details the current version of the SixthSense system.

Objectives: The just in time model, especially its logistical approach of “delivering on time” can be a practical approach and, using the best of its tools, become an effective logistical method of allocating brigade members to field, which is therefore the main objective of this article: it is expected that this proposal is viable, applicable and practical, flexible enough to adapt to variations in demand within the expected complexities of typical large forest fires.

Methodology: Research in a bibliographic review, field research was carried out to collect information together with those responsible for the management of PARNA Serra do Cipó/BRASIL, as well as interviews with firefighter commanders who were in charge of the fires in the season.

Results: After correct dimensioning of the florest fire (via information by phone calls, radio or via satellite) at the Command Post, the response coordination must plan the employment in the number of available brigade members and activate those who are in the advanced bases closest to the fire outbreaks, gaining in response time, less wear and tear on vehicles and brigade members and greater chances of catching fire in its initial stage.

Conclusions: It is expected that the logistics of employment of brigade members in dispersed bases, but always previously planned and allocated, with the proper communication capacity, will be an important point of improvement in response time and allocation of resources, reducing travel time and presenting practical gain in the preservation of our environment.

The present wildland fires scenarios show and foresee an increase in the need to improve the external support when an extreme fire or a simultaneity of them hit a zone. This means the necessary improvement of the preparedness phase, deployment procedures, coordination and interoperability of the supporting teams and resources to the requesting part (it is an external, and not always neighboring: administration, region or country)

Even when it is not new, in 2022 there has been several episodes of simultaneity of wildland fires (some of them bigger than 3.000ha) all along Spain. That is why the request of support from the regions to the national level has been extraordinarily numerous and needed to be as fast, effective and efficient as possible.

Specifically, the supporting helitracked fire brigades (BRIF) in the Peninsula have been deployed at 100% of their capacity for some periods during 2022 summer, which has represented a real challenge mainly in a) fire triage; b) deployment criteria (when and how); c) deployment planning; d) coordination; e) cooperation; f) interoperability; g) self-sufficiency; h) logistics; and i) demobilization.

A lot has been learnt from the experience and those lessons learnt could be useful for other countries or regions: supporting or requesting support, concerning extraordinary severe wildland fires episodes.

The thermophysiological strain is a risk of concern in wildland firefighting. In these scenarios, physiological monitoring has been proposed to assess the physiological status and prevent injury. The physiological strain index (PSI) combines heart rate and core temperature into a numerical value and has been widely adopted for modelling thermal strain. However, measuring core temperature is challenging in the field. Therefore, using skin instead of core temperature has been proposed to calculate the PSI in the so-called modified PSI (mPSI). This study aimed to analyse the performance of the mPSI versus the original PSI. Ten wildland firefighters performed a field test in the heat (WBGT= 25.6±1.8 ºC), consisting of a circuit of four tasks (i.e., walking up and down a slope carrying a 20 kg backpack, fire-swattering and charged hose advance), interpersed by 90 s recovery. After a break of 10 min, the 4 exercises were repeated. Heart rate, core temperature and chest skin temperature were continuously monitored throughout the trials. Physiological variables were averaged every 1 min for analysis. Agreement between PSI and mPSI was assessed through standardised mean bias (BIAS), root mean squared error (RMSE), Pearson correlation (r), and limits of agreement (LoA). The mean PSI and mPSI were similar (5.8±0.9 versus 5.6±0.5) and highly correlated (R=0.8±0.2). BIAS, RMSE, and LoA were 0.2±0.8, 1.1±0.2, and 1.5±0.6, respectively. The moderate agreement found suggests that mPSI could be used to track the global thermophysiological status on-field. Future studies should further analyse the sources of variability found between mPSI and PSI.

The decision-making process regarding fire suppression requires advanced tools to support it. In this regard, operations research provides models that not only simulate how the fire is going to behave, leaving the dispatching decisions to the wildfires' manager, but also optimize the available resources in order to contain the fire as soon as possible.
This kind of tools are likewise able to consider the interaction between fire expansion and suppression, developing a more realistic strategy, not leading to an overestimation of the necessary resources, and supplying the fire managers with a good support decision tool that may help them make better decisions, combining it with their experience.
In this work, a model is presented for determining which points of a landscape should be treated once a fire has started, in order to stop its spread. The model considers the time windows provided by the fire behaviour for taking actions, which in turn are affected by the fire suppression strategy itself.