Manufacturing: Builder Faces Red Tape Getting Fire Vehicle OK’d for Use
SPRING VALLEY , As fires raged through Alpine two weeks ago, firefighters mobilized heroically to save the countryside and rural residents. However, one fire-fighting tool was forced to sit idle in Spring Valley, even as flames were raging only a few miles away.
For Rick White, inventor and founder of Fire Attack Vehicles, Inc., this is a cautionary tale of delays and bureaucratic red tape that has stopped him from deploying his patented Firecat , much less selling the machine to interested fire agencies throughout the nation.
“Even with a wildfire raging, the Firecat is waiting, as it has been on and off, for the past decade,” he lamented in the aftermath of the recent Viejas fire, which scorched more than 10,000 acres and burned six homes in East County. “We have been featured in Popular Mechanics, the Discovery Channel, on the Learning Channel, the program Real TV, and half a dozen newspaper articles, but we still haven’t made a cent with the darn thing.”
Looking like a New Holland farm tractor decked out in sci-fi trappings, the Firecat attacks fires without water or chemicals. Instead, it drives right along the edge of the fire, using spinning blades to cut at burning branches and grasses.
A high-pressure air jet then blows the debris back into the fire, while agitators stir up dirt, he said.
And that’s all it takes. By cutting the burning material away, it creates a firebreak that stops the fire from spreading. And because the heat is dissipated over a wide area, the fire goes out, White said.
Successfully Tested
White founded Fire Attack Vehicles, Inc., in 1994 with research scientist Charles Eminhizer. The two , the company’s only employees , worked to create a prototype Firecat, which has been successfully tested in several controlled burns set at Niland and on the Pala reservation.
White now has a newer version that can do the same job, but weighs one-fourth as much and costs half as much , $250,000, plus minor yearly maintenance costs. The machine could be used in 80 to 90 percent of all the grassland and chaparral fires that occur in the United States, he said.
The new machine version is ready, but still it must wait for its trial by fire.
One problem with the Firecat is the technology is so new. Firefighters are loath to try untested technology during an actual fire because if they step outside established procedures, somebody can get killed.
“We never imagined that it would be difficult to find fires to suppress,” he said. “There was an assumption that was mistaken on my part , that we could just go down the road and help put out a fire somewhere. But the road’s closed off, and you can’t go down the road to where the fire is.”
Permits Difficult To Obtain
Nor is it easy to demonstrate the Firecat under test conditions, since there is no permit mechanism in the United States for testing fire suppression equipment during wildfires. And it’s difficult, if not impossible, to get permits from the various federal and state jurisdictions to light a wildfire just to test methods to suppress it, White said.
“Beyond the Department of Agriculture, you have to get permission from the California Department of Forestry; you have to get permission from the Air Pollution Control District. There may be some Fish and Game issues involved if some bird is nesting,” he said. “Because it’s not a permit that somebody comes in to ask for, there’s no real process.”
White also said he could understand why people were reluctant to give the new technology a shot.
“Nobody wants to go in there with experimental technology,” he said. “Experiments fail every day; that’s why it’s called an experiment. None of these men want their career on the line , there’s certainly no bonus if we go and do an experiment and it works. All there is to them is a downside risk.”
White mentioned an understanding he reached with Doug Hyde-Sato, contracting officer with the U.S. Forest Service, in which the Firecat was added to the list of available equipment ready for use on an as-needed basis during wildfires. But White noted this basically amounts to an unsigned letter and a vague promise.
Hyde-Sato acknowledged he was familiar with the Firecat, but added there was no contractual obligation to use the Firecat. Instead, the only individuals who have the authority to decide what equipment to use on any fire are the people at the scene, he said.
