Year after year fire devastates the lives of thousands of people. Many of us have seen images of fires that gut entire neighborhoods and level hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine forest. Admittedly, many of these fires are caused by lightening strikes and are believed to be a part of a natural cycle. Then there are fires caused by negligence and arson. No matter how wildfires begin the results are always the sameloss of life, loss of property, and utilization of ever decreasing resources.
The containment of wildfire is complicated by a variety of things, such as difficult terrain, lack of manpower, equipment limitations, poor forest management and the use of highly combustible building products. All of these factors will fuel a fire, allowing it to go for days or even weeks.
So, how do we protect homes and people from wildfire without limiting our desires to enjoy the beauty of the wilderness? I think part of the solution might be to devise a sprinkler system of sorts,similar to the ones found in buildings around the world. The primary difference being that these outdoor sprinkler systems would be designed to extinguish fires that threaten homes and property.
If you go to my website <<link moved to links area, below>> I have made a crude drawing of how the system would work.
Essentially, runoff water from rain, snow melt, and community use (ie: lawn sprinklers, car washing, etc.) would be captured and stored in large underground or above ground cisterns. Since areas prone to wildfire are not necessarily burned each year water collection could occur over several seasons, assuring adequate quantities.
When fire threatens property or a group of houses, pump stations, powered by gas generators would activate, sending the reserved water into the air and dousing the approaching flames. Grid systems could be established to protect entire communities. And since not all of a particular area is at equal risk, the grid system could be computer activated to direct water to those areas that have the greatest need.
Its like watering a golf course, just on a larger scale. And part of the beauty of this system is that the water being used to extinguish the fires could be immediately re-collected, extending its use even further.-- veryvermilion, Jul 28 2004 [veryvermilion]'s link, as a link http://home.earthlink.net/~tomcogburn/ [Klaatu, Oct 17 2004] Exterior Sprinklers http://www.halfbake...r_20on_20the_20roofLooks redundant to me, minus collectivism. [Laughs Last, Oct 17 2004] Please forgive me if this idea is located elsewhere in halfbakery... I've not been able to find it and was told by one of the site managers that a corruption had deleted the file. Sounds awfully complicated.-- veryvermilion, Jul 28 2004 Either way, this is pretty cool +-- swimr, Jul 28 2004 Though I fear that the number of sprinklers you'd need to protect even a small town would be huge, I think this could be done for some situations. +-- Worldgineer, Jul 28 2004 The only place I can see this as being useful would be as a means of 'reinforcing' fire breaks; in such situations, it might be quite useful.
Unfortunately, at least in the U.S., leftists would rather have forests burn to the ground than be marred with firebreaks.-- supercat, Jul 29 2004 Firebreaks, unless they're very wide, don't do a real lot to stop big fires, anyway.-- Zanzibar, Jul 29 2004 random, halfbakery