Firefighting

This Sci-Fi Helmet Could Give Firefighters Predator Thermal Vision

When firefighters have to enter a burning building, much of their job still involves blindly feeling their way through dense plumes of toxic fumes in search of those trapped inside. However, a novel new helmet design could one day give firefighters the ability to see through the smoke and hear beyond the roar of the…

How fires will be extinguished in the skyscrapers of the future, according to the March 1927 issue of Science and Invention magazine.

A 100-Year-Old Emergency Water Supply Put Out A Fire In SF This Week

The five-alarm fire that destroyed a San Francisco apartment building this week put the city’s municipal water supply to the test: When water pressure began to dwindle, firefighters tapped an emergency system that was built below the city—all the way back in 1913. The six-story building under construction in the city’s Mission Bay neighborhood caught…

Dubai’s Turning Drones into Firefighters

It makes perfect sense. Burning buildings are very dangerous places for people to enter, so when there’s a fire that needs to be put out, why not recruit robots to do the dirty work? That’s exactly what Dubai Civil Defense is doing this year. The emergency management organization just bought 15 quadcopters that it plans…

In 1961 The Future of Firefighting Was Heat-Seeking Missiles

Need to put out a forest fire? Why not bomb it with chemical-filled missiles? At least that was the plan in 1961. The September 17, 1961 edition of Arthur Radebaugh‘s Sunday comic strip “Closer Than We Think” imagined that in the future, firefighters would rain down missiles from the sky. Needless to say, it’s hard…

The Gear Crews Use to Snuff Out the Rim Fire

As of this morning, the Rim Fire burning through Yosemite National Park has scorched 237,341 acres—roughly 370 square miles—since it caught on August 17th, presumably from an illegal marijuana grow operation. Firefighters from across the state and country have been battling the blaze nonstop and currently have the fire 75 percent contained. Crews credit better,…

The Anti-Skyscraper Law That Shaped Sydney, Australia

When we look at visions of the future from the 20th century we often imagine the lone inventor or solitary artist concocting the fantastical world of tomorrow in isolation. But it’s amazing how frequently both government regulation and the lack of regulation can influence the future of a given city in ways we don’t often…

Futurist fixes for fighting skyscraper fires

“The tallest building in the world is on fire. You are there with 294 other guests. There’s no way down. There’s no way out.” So read the poster for the 1974 disaster movie Towering Inferno, which depicts an epic tale of survival in the badly wired 138 story Glass Tower in San Francisco and the…

Navy’s newest robot is a mechanized, grenade-tossing firefighter

Add another eerily lifelike robot to the military’s rapidly expanding android army. This one is, of all things, a mechanical firefighter. And not only can it climb ladders like its flesh-and-blood counterparts, it’s designed to interact with human handlers in a kind of human/robot bucket brigade. Developed by the Naval Research Laboratory, the Shipboard Autonomous…

Copper Thief Causes Massive Explosion

Check out this UK video of a row house explosion. Taken by the Engine cam, it’s frightening and amazing at the same time. Right before the explosion, a group of firefighters just rescued a bunch of people from their houses after a report of a kitchen fire. While they were still cleaning up, the house…

6 Tools That Are Saving Arizona from the Wildfires

Now that summer is heating up, certain parts of the world are prone to one heat specific disaster: wildfires. Numerous regions in Arizona, and the Los Alamos Nuclear Plant in New Mexico, are currently being ravaged by wildfires. And though it’s only a minor consolation, there’s lots of forward-thinking technology being put to use. Here…

Arizona’s Wallow Wildfire From an Airplane

A guy with a window seat and a mobile phone captured some impressive video footage of Arizona’s Wallow wildfire. The view from the sky lets you see the scale of Arizona’s second largest fire and appreciate how large of an area is actively burning. You also get to see the giant smoke plume that is…

These Tools Help Firefighters Start Fires

Firefighters have the coolest job. They get to play with fire each day and don’t get in any trouble for doing so. Of all the firefighting jobs out there, the position of burn boss is by far the best. https://gizmodo.com/firefighter-burns-self-with-ipad-2-in-ironic-blaze-5787560 Burn bosses are responsible for starting controlled-burn fires that prevent the devastating spread of wildfires.…

How City Hall Nearly Burned Down the Bronx

Firefighting is more than fancy hats and ladder trucks – there’s both a science and an art to it. Joe Flood’s The Fires shows how New York’s Bravest take out a blaze from the top down. Just after eight-thirty in the morning on August 2, 1978, a small fire broke out on the mezzanine level…

Future firefighters could fight fire with blasts of flame-bending electricity

In some respects, firefighting technology has come a long way over the past several decades—we now have flame suppressing foams and powders for instance, as well as new ways of delivering them to the fire. But fundamentally, we’re still fighting fires the old fashioned way: point hose/bucket/pressurized container and drench. But a team of Harvard…

Behold the Awesome Force of China’s Jet-Powered Water Cannon

Click to viewIf we’re not participating in a jet-powered water cannon arms race yet, we need to get going. Because once you watch China’s $456,000 monster spew four tons of water per minute, you’re going to want one of our own. That contraption—meant to suppress office fires—has a range of nearly 400 feet, and expels…

Firefighters Stood By and Watched While This House Burned to the Ground

Click to viewWell this is pretty sick. Residents in Obion County, Tennessee have to pay an annual fee of $75 for fire department service. The Cranick family didn’t pay, so firefighters stood around and watched their house burn to the ground. Initially, the South Fulton city fire department wouldn’t even respond to the family’s calls,…

Inside the San Francisco Fire Department’s Wooden Ladder Factory

Sounds crazy (wood + fire?) but the SFFD’s one of the few to still use wooden ladders—they don’t conduct electricity—which they build with Douglas fir that’s been matured for 15 years. [ASK Media via Neatorama via Laughing Squid]

20,500-Gallon Firefighting Boeing 747 Supertanker In Action

The fire season has started in half of the world and I wish there were more of these 747 Firefighting Supertankers. They can drop 20,500 gallons of water in one go, as you can see in the video. Rob Cockerham at PopSci got to see it in action, and took a few photographs of this…

Firehose, Meet Fire Missile Launcher

We’re not firefighters, so this idea may be completely crazy. But if we fought fires for a living, we’d feel a lot more comfortable doing battle with this mean-looking gas-propelled missile launcher concept. We’ve all see those clips on the news, a firehose suspended from a lift shoots water into a burning building. It looks…