Emergency Shelters Can Be Firetraps for Firefighters, Researchers Say

Emergency shelters used to protect workers battling forest fires from intense heat can turn into firetraps when touched by flames, the U.S. Forest Service says.

Contact with flames causes the shelters to fill with highly flammable toxic smoke, which can ignite into a fireball, researchers found. The Forest Service and other federal agencies sent warnings to fire crews last week after tests in Canada caught the fireballs on videotape.

“We’ve always said it’s important to keep the shelter out of flames, and now we know why,” said Leslie Anderson, who led the Montana-based team that discovered the danger.

Jim Steele was one of 73 firefighters who became surrounded by 200-foot flames and used their shelters for more than an hour during a 1985 Idaho forest fire. He said the fire’s strong winds blew smoke, soot and ashes into his shelter, but the shelter itself did not start to smoke.

“It got pretty hot--hot enough that you sweat,” said Steele, now a wildfire training specialist with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Montana. “It’s like what I would envision a baked potato feels like.”

Although firefighters have died or suffered burns inside shelters, there have been no documented injuries or deaths because of this flash fire problem, Anderson said.

“That may be because we didn’t know what to look for,” she said.

Anderson said researchers have recommended redesigning the shelters to try to lessen or eliminate the problem. Some new designs are being tested, but it is unclear whether they would stand up to flames better, said Mike Apicello, a spokesman at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

The tent-like shelters are 5 feet by 7 feet of fiberglass fabric with an outer aluminum coating designed to reflect heat. The thousands of firefighters who battle forest or brush fires each year carry folded shelters in a pouch on their belts for use in emergencies when they are surrounded by fire.

The shelters are made to government specifications by Anchor Industries Inc. of Evansville, Ind. More than 1 million have been made since they became standard wildfire equipment in 1977.