- Author
- Stechihen, E. | Little, E. C.
- Title
- Water Application Depths Required for Extinguishment of Low Intensity Fires in Forest Fuels.
- Coporate
- Forest Fire Research Institute, Ontario, Canada
- Report
- Information Report FF-X-29, May 1971, 67 p.
- Keywords
- forest fires | fuels | extinguishment | air tankers | fuel beds | flame fronts | pine needle fuel | slash fuels | water
- Identifiers
- red pine needle fuel tests; balsam fir slash tests; black spruce slash tests; white spruce slash tests; airtanker water drop contour patterns
- Abstract
- An airtanker drop simulator was designed to apply water to burning fuels, to measure the effectiveness of water as a fire suppressant and to permit the evaluation of different water bombers on the basis of their drop contour patterns. Problems associated with burning insitu fuelbeds are discussed and details of fuel conditioning, fuelbed preparation and fuelbed characteristics are presented. The necessity to use red pine needles and each of the slash fuels (balsam fir, black spruce and white spruce) individually in test fires is discussed. The associated problems are presented to indicate that fire intensity is a poor measure of fire severity in the determination of depth of applied water required to extinguish different intensity fires for different fuels. Curves for water versus intensity for each type of fuel are presented to denote the zone of extinguishment, the zone of delayed extinguishment and the zone of reignition.