September 21, 2009

What's in that Slurry?

From the InciWeb site (see blogroll at right), a news release about the ingredients of the retardant solutions ("slurry") dropped on wildland fires.

Aerial drops of retardant have come a long way since the first recorded water drop in 1930, when a Ford Tri-Motor airplane used a wooden beer keg filled with water. Now air tankers can drop 500 to 2000 gallons of retardant at a time to help suppress fires. Helitankers, which are helicopters with built-in tanks, can drop up to 2000 gallons; retrofitted DC-10s have an 11,000 gallon capacity, and Boeing 747s 20,000 gallons.

In the Wet Mountains, we had one of Zeus's slurry drops today: a mixture of rain and snow that should reduce the fire danger pretty well for a while.

(Via Firefighter Blog.)

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