Aerial Firefighting
AERIAL FIREFIGHTING
Introduction
Firefighters shall be deployed should all preventive measures fail. Unfortunately, the scale of forest fire could be so large that the number of ground firefighting crews would fall short. For instance, the fire in Kalimantan, Indonesia, in 1982 affected a scale of 3.5 million hectares of woods, its 1997 counterpart blazed across 5 million hectares (Boer, 2002); the 2009 forest fire in Southern Australia razed a relatively smaller but nonetheless significant area of 0.5 million hectare (Harrison et al, 2009). Considering that one hectare is about the size of two American football fields (Toro Au., n.d.), these figures alone are overwhelming enough to imply the extreme difficulty in forest firefighting, not to mention that access to inner part of woods could be impractical for fire engines or other land vehicles.
In light of the above-mentioned factors, aerial firefighting technologies are absolutely essential for countries like Indonesia where tropical forests prevail. As indicates by the term “aerial”, aircraft such as air tankers or helicopters loaded with water bombs or fire retardants are deployed to the fire scene – often remote or inaccessible by land transport – to extinguish or suppress the flame (Kaulfuß, 2011).
Main factors contributing to a successful aerial firefighting are accessibility to water resource, topography, and acumen. Prompt refills can be made to water tanks loaded on aircraft with water bodies nearby (Kaulfuß, 2011), and fire tends to spread faster upslope than downslope (Bennett, 2010). The point of focus during an attack is the fire perimeter, thus pre-terrain analysis and simulation are necessary for shrewd decision-making and execution; it is suggested that the acceleration phase of forest fire could be as short as 30 minutes (Plucinski et al, 2007).
Effectiveness and Parameters
The following table shows the corresponding suppression technique to different types of fire in UK:
(Table 1:
Introduction
Firefighters shall be deployed should all preventive measures fail. Unfortunately, the scale of forest fire could be so large that the number of ground firefighting crews would fall short. For instance, the fire in Kalimantan, Indonesia, in 1982 affected a scale of 3.5 million hectares of woods, its 1997 counterpart blazed across 5 million hectares (Boer, 2002); the 2009 forest fire in Southern Australia razed a relatively smaller but nonetheless significant area of 0.5 million hectare (Harrison et al, 2009). Considering that one hectare is about the size of two American football fields (Toro Au., n.d.), these figures alone are overwhelming enough to imply the extreme difficulty in forest firefighting, not to mention that access to inner part of woods could be impractical for fire engines or other land vehicles.
In light of the above-mentioned factors, aerial firefighting technologies are absolutely essential for countries like Indonesia where tropical forests prevail. As indicates by the term “aerial”, aircraft such as air tankers or helicopters loaded with water bombs or fire retardants are deployed to the fire scene – often remote or inaccessible by land transport – to extinguish or suppress the flame (Kaulfuß, 2011).
Main factors contributing to a successful aerial firefighting are accessibility to water resource, topography, and acumen. Prompt refills can be made to water tanks loaded on aircraft with water bodies nearby (Kaulfuß, 2011), and fire tends to spread faster upslope than downslope (Bennett, 2010). The point of focus during an attack is the fire perimeter, thus pre-terrain analysis and simulation are necessary for shrewd decision-making and execution; it is suggested that the acceleration phase of forest fire could be as short as 30 minutes (Plucinski et al, 2007).
Effectiveness and Parameters
The following table shows the corresponding suppression technique to different types of fire in UK:
(Table 1: