By Alan M. Petrillo
The National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) Fire Shelter Subcommittee, comprising federal, state, and local wildland firefighters, wildfire safety specialists, fire management officers, and other fire shelter users, has recommended to the NWCG executive board to continue using the 2002 wildland fire shelter instead of deploying any of the new prototypes that had been field-tested in several jurisdictions during the 2018 wildland fire season.
Wildland fire shelter prototypes for equipment operators and line firefighters were tested during the 2018 fire season. From left, prototype shelter for equipment operators and its carrying case, prototype shelter for line firefighters and its case, and the current issue 2002 fire shelter and its carrying case. (All photos courtesy of U.S. Forest Service's Missoula Technology & Development Center.)
The executive board's decision to keep the current fire shelter in use comes after 40 wildland firefighters carried one of two new fire shelter prototypes for “wear testing” as part of the Fire Shelter Project Review, administered by the USDA Forest Service National Technology and Development Program, and initiated in 2014 to identify possible improvements to the fire shelter system.
The NWGC had selected four new fire shelter prototypes for wear testing from 60 prototype fire shelter designs that had shown improved performance in lab tests. Wear test prototype fire shelters were issued to every federal agency in NWCG, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish & Wildlife, U.S. Park Service, and CAL FIRE, says Tony Petrilli, fire shelter project leader for the US Forest Service's Missoula Technology & Development Center. "For line firefighter shelters we issued them to Interagency Hotshot Crews from California, Idaho, Arizona, and the Northern Rockies to evaluate the durability of the shelters.
"The wildfire environment is very rugged, and fire shelters must be carried by wildland firefighters for years yet still be functional when needed," Petrilli points out. "We gave them to the crews that could give them the most use and abuse. Other federal agencies and CAL FIRE got their hands on prototype shelters to use and check out too."
An Interagency Hotshot Crew firefighter works a fire line while carrying a prototype wildland fire shelter.
Forty fire shelters for line firefighters and for equipment operators were part of the field testing, Petrilli says, with 20 prototypes going to hotshot crews and 20 shelters to equipment operators. "They were tested from June through September 2018, which is the solid part of the fire season," Petrilli points out, "but there were no actual deployments of the prototype shelters."
The biggest job that a fire shelter has to do is be carried around by a wildland firefighter all day, every day, all season long, Petrilli notes. “That doesn’t lend itself to the use of a lot of materials that can withstand high temperatures because of weight, bulk, durability and toxicity," he says.
After the wear tests, the prototype shelters were returned t