By Jordan Golson
Wired
UNLIKE FIGHTING A house fire, which involves pouring thousands of gallons of water on the problem, battling a wildfire is more akin to precision high-speed landscaping. There’s no way to apply enough water to put it out entirely, so you deploy manpower to create a firebreak. Surround a fire with an area without any fuel to burn and it should, eventually, go out.
Bulldozers can cut a ten-foot wide swath down to the dirt, and 20-man “Hotshot” crews will work in concert to cut out a dirt path around a fire with hoes and chainsaws. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.
That’s why, according to CBS San Francisco, crews fighting the massive Rocky Fire in northern California—which has already burned 70,000 acres of land and destroyed more than 40 homes—have dusted off a somewhat more extraordinary piece of equipment: the helitorch. Yes: It’s a flame-spitting helicopter.
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