Western Standard - Wall of water： a solution for wildfires

00:00:00.000 Good afternoon Western Standard viewers, Nigel Hannaford here from the floor of the Global Energy

00:00:17.820 Show conference and exhibition. In an energy show, it's not all oil, it's not all gas, it's not even

00:00:27.920 all electricity. There are hundreds of sub-trades that go together to make the

00:00:34.940 whole thing work and one of them has to do, not specifically even with oil and

00:00:41.300 gas, it has to do with fighting forest fires. We've had shocking fires, we've had

00:00:47.720 Fort McMurray nearly burned to the ground, we had Jasper at Great Risk just

00:00:53.480 last year and when you look at the when you look at those towns you think man

00:00:58.820 wouldn't it have been great was just more hose pipes. Well maybe it's not more

00:01:02.480 hose pipes you need, maybe it is a thick hydraulic mist in the air. One man who

00:01:10.400 has thought this through and has developed a prototype is Don Hallett. He is the

00:01:18.500 founder of Wildfire Innovations Inc and the product is called Rainstream. What

00:01:25.700 does it work, how does it work Don? Well Rainstream is an elevated technology that

00:01:31.700 propels water long distances above the top of a forest canopy acting simulating rain

00:01:39.800 and it's timed and targeted so it's a little more resourceful on the use of

00:01:45.080 water and covers the larger area to protect municipalities and critical

00:01:49.520 infrastructure. So what where would your water source be for something like that?

00:01:56.480 Well generally most municipalities have a hydrant system so we tap into the

00:02:02.060 pressurized hydrant system and use a pump to push the water out of the tower

00:02:07.400 and it can be controlled with how big of an area you want to cover by the amount of

00:02:14.840 water you spray and the size of area that's actually really needed. So how big a

00:02:21.920 piece of equipment would this be? Well this mobile unit can actually be

00:02:26.000 deployed with a one-ton dually truck or a little bit larger. The footprint to

00:02:33.160 actually deploy the mobile unit is approximately 30 feet by 40 feet long. So if

00:02:43.480 you've got okay you have this unit you've got a fire approaching a community you

00:02:49.720 place it how much land how many built you know what area of development are you

00:02:56.740 going to protect? Well generally what you want to do is we would set up on the

00:03:01.780 perimeter of a municipality or even a little bit farther out if you had to but

00:03:06.520 it's usually the edge of town or city and we propel over into the forest but in a

00:03:12.600 full rotation of 360 degrees then we use wind to fight the fire because as you

00:03:18.940 know when a fire is burning the bigger they get the more the stronger the wind

00:03:23.020 and the farther the embers travel and we're trying to deal with the ember

00:03:28.440 transplant that's happening with these wildfires. So an ember obviously will will

00:03:34.020 fire up something that's very dry but if it lands on something wet the danger is

00:03:38.760 vastly diminished? Yeah it lessens the likelihood of it igniting and it also

00:03:44.520 provides a muster area for people so hopefully it'll cut down on the

00:03:49.680 evacuations. So if you if you think about a typical little community in the in the

00:03:57.600 outback in the in the woods a town of 4,000 people will say they've they've got

00:04:03.100 the hydraulic system that you need there are fire hydrants everywhere maybe it's a

00:04:09.680 square mile of development surrounded by a couple of square miles of you know a

00:04:15.000 little industrial estates and things like that but then there's forest and

00:04:19.260 there's forest there how many of these units do you think you would need to

00:04:23.400 deploy to give good protection to the to a town like that? Well we can run them in

00:04:30.760 a linear fashion more than one and they're quick quick deployment with the

00:04:34.740 crew train crew they can be set up in about five minutes but I say 20 to 30

00:04:39.240 minutes because there's always something that gets in the way to cover say one

00:04:43.520 kilometer length six units would pretty much set up a wall of water for you it

00:04:48.860 all depends on how strong that's a great phrase a wall of water now we've got a

00:04:53.660 picture from your brochure there that with that we're going to add it into the

00:04:57.380 into the sequence but it's not necessarily like a stream of water this is a

00:05:03.140 mist the dense mist yeah that that you're describing if you stand well there's a

00:05:10.820 soaking radius a misting radius and a humidity radius so if you ever tried to

00:05:18.020 light a campfire after rain the night before even though your wood is dry

00:05:22.820 trying to keep the match going that's the humidity and the misting obviously

00:05:26.720 would repel the the fire as well and the soaking it's pretty tough to light

00:05:31.880 anything that's drenched. Don how far are you in the development stage of this

00:05:37.740 machine? We just got the first prototype up and running late last year and we're

00:05:45.100 getting all the bugs out of it we're pretty much ready for deployment by the

00:05:49.740 end of June. Really? So I think it's worth saying this again it's a it's called

00:05:56.160 rain stream and your wildfire innovations what are these machines going to cost?

00:06:01.820 It depends on the model they come with a variety of options that can come with it

00:06:07.940 so they could range anywhere from five hundred to seven hundred and fifty

00:06:10.640 thousand a piece but we do have smaller models so basically you got your

00:06:17.200 Volkswagen your Cadillac and your Porsche kind of a thing. Okay so I mean it's

00:06:24.020 been a lot of a lot of talk recently about perhaps Banff is in danger just as

00:06:30.380 Jasper was last year. Do you think of Banff? Oh yeah we're in talks with Banff our

00:06:36.560 list is getting pretty long globally more so we're focused right now in Canada and

00:06:41.060 the United States but we just finished a demo in Calmore about a month ago so the

00:06:47.340 interest is higher I think we had over 60 people come out to witness that.

00:06:52.760 So you had a controlled burn that you extinguished? No there was no fire it was

00:06:57.860 just to show how it works and you know get some excitement. Well we all pray for

00:07:03.800 rain when there's a fire so we're trying to bring some. Yeah Don for viewers benefit

00:07:10.520 Don shared quite a quite a an intimate personal story of the progress through

00:07:16.440 cancer and COVID before that this is something that you've worked up in the

00:07:22.980 last few years it's an incredible idea we'll show all success with it so that's

00:07:27.560 rain stream from from our innovations wildfire innovations thank you Nigel for

00:07:35.340 the interest in interviewing me well Don it's been a pleasure yeah good luck yeah

00:07:39.420 that thank you take care for the Western Standard I'm Nigel Hannaford

Western Standard - June 14, 2025

Wall of water： a solution for wildfires

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