New Portable Fabric Fortresses Put the Lid on Fire Threat to Buildings

A home or cabin stands little chance of surviving a wildfire, but a heat-resistant shroud that’s to be tested this summer in the West could change that.

An Oregon firefighter and Arizona-based Rural-Metro Corp., a private firefighting company, have developed a system they say can protect buildings against 1,500-degree flames. It can be installed in less than an hour and is portable--about the size of two refrigerators.

The shroud doesn’t extinguish fires, but it does protect individual buildings against flames, much like the personal shelters that firefighters use when they’re trapped by a fire. In fact, those shelters were the inspiration for the building shelters, said Jeff Liggett, a Portland, Ore., firefighter.

“All we’re really doing is protecting little tiny bubbles of financial investment,” Liggett said.

The shelters Liggett has developed are made of high-tech flame-resistant fabric panels. They are draped over a building and held down with screws. A pumping system goes into the top, pushing water down between the panels and the building. The water expands as it turns to steam, creating a damp cushion between the fabric and the building.

In tests with propane fires, which heat to about 1,500 degrees, buildings were exposed for 20 minutes without shattering the windows or scorching the outside, even with flaming wood leaned against the building, Liggett said.

The fabric fire fortresses have been under development and in the test stage for the past two years, but Rural-Metro, the Scottsdale company that funded most of Liggett’s work, is hoping to expose the shelters to their first real wildfire this season.

“We are ready to use it on a fire. We’re all geared up, planned up, contracted up. All we need is a fire reasonably near where [the shelters] are located,” said Lou Jekel, a Phoenix attorney who is also chief of Rural-Metro’s wildfire division.

Rural-Metro and Liggett are demonstrating and training firefighters throughout the West to use the shelters while they wait for a wildfire to use them on.

So far, only firefighters with wildland and urban firefighting training can set up the equipment, but the system may be available as early as next summer to a few commercial locations, like hunting lodges or out-of-the-way inns, Liggett said.

Eventually, the fire shelters may be available to individual homeowners, but that is at least several years away, he said. The fabric and water pump weigh about 800 pounds, and several trained people are needed to install the shelters.

“We’re trying to be very conservative in how we sell this. We don’t want 68-year-old Joe Schmoe climbing on his roof and installing it and having a heart attack and falling off the roof. The last thing we want is to present this as a nirvana,” Liggett said.

Liggett did not want to say exactly how much it costs to produce the fabric fortresses, but the National Forest Service has contracted with Rural-Metro to use the equipment at a cost of up to $1,500 a day.

The contract, which covers Oregon and Washington, is similar to one that will likely be used in other regions of the country, Liggett said.

Roberta Whitlock, regional equipment specialist for the National Forest Service in Oregon and Washington, said the shelters would only be used in limited cases when the Forest Service is asked to protect buildings.

Dick Mangan, the fire program leader for the Forest Service’s research lab in Montana, said his office is testing materials for the agency’s own structural fire shelter. Forest Service officials are looking for inexpensive materials that could be quickly stapled or tacked to historic buildings.

Their materials testing is scheduled to start later this month.

Jekel of Rural-Metro said the major advantage to using structural fire shelters is that firefighters can put them on buildings and get out before they risk being trapped by the fire. After the blaze moves through, firefighters can return to the house or building and extinguish the smoldering hot spots.

Fires that start in open areas and advance into urban developments are becoming more and more common, Liggett said.

“As more and more people flee the density of the city, they become all these independent remote sites. They become very hard to protect. The losses have been horrendous,” he said.