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ILDFIRES USED TO have a thirty-four-day shift, from July 19 to docino Complex, which lasted fifty-four snowmelt, as did our history of suppress- Well, 2018 is over and 2019 brings hope. two paid days of. “I got to go home, pay the a season. From May to August 21. “Back when I first started, it days a hundred miles north of San Fran- ing wildfires—which creates a buildup of A frehouse in Silicon Valley is pioneering bills, kiss the wife, dogs, and kids,” Tik- October, much of Califor- was the eleven-day mark,” he says. “When cisco—and collectively, California fires natural fuels. But so has the push of people ways to put drones to work for emergency kanen says. Then he was back. In the future, nia—plus parts of most I started to cross the eleven-day mark charred an area twice the size of Rhode into nature. Wild states like Arizona, Colo- workers. Scientists can better predict how a maybe he’d be rotated onto drone duty. Or states west of the Rockies— on a regular basis, it was the twenty-one, Island. Nevada lost 1.1 million acres. In rado, and Utah have exploded in population. fre will burn. Jamie Hyneman, the former VR-pilot Hyneman’s tank. Maybe he’d tele- would be on alert for dry conditions. Cold, twenty-three-day mark that I would start Oregon, Idaho, and Utah, 1.8 million. There are many ways to start a fre, and save MythBuster, has engineered a firefight- commute. One thing’s for certain: In the wet November meant the threat was over. getting stir-crazy. And then after I did that And it’s not just out west: Nearly six hun- lightning, they all begin with us. Firefghters ing tank that can be platooned and piloted future, if he’s in the feld at all, he’ll be safer Then 2018 happened. for a long stretch of years, it was thirty-, dred thousand acres burned in Oklahoma. in urban areas are a crucial line of defense, remotely or even autonomously. than ever. In this special report, Popular This year David Tikkanen, a twenty- forty-plus days.” His record is ffty-three. The earth’s changing climate con- and they don’t have it easy, either. New syn- After his record ffty-three-day hitch, Mechanics has found exciting new methods year veteran of the California Department The fre season grows. California faced tributed to the increase, meddling with thetic building materials burn hotter and Tikk anen rolled into camp and told every- and technologies that will help frefghters of Forestry and Fire Protection, worked its biggest fire ever this year—the Men- precipitation patterns and hastening with higher toxicity than wood and brick. one he was done. The higher-ups gave him around the country for years to come.

86 Winter 2018–19 _ PopularMechanics.com PHOTOGRAPH BY DWIGHT ESCHLIMAN @PopularMechanics _ W i n t e r 2 0 1 8 – 1 9 87 FIFTY YEARS AGO fashover—the point at which a room gets so hot its contents ignite, engulfng anyone inside—took twenty to thirty minutes. But changes in home design and the increased use of synthetic materials have dropped it to fewer than fve minutes. The average arrival time for fre- fghters is six and a half. But a new set of technologically enhanced protocols—some already rolling out, others not far of—will help frefghters deploy more efciently.

Present Future IN THE SUMMER OF 2014, Craig Clements was driving his You notice a candle has You call 911. The dis- lifted Ford F-250 down California State Route 44 when toppled and lit the couch patcher takes down your on fre. You call 911 and information. Then he the postdoc from his lab, San Jose State’s Fire Weather Research Laboratory, said the words of every scientist’s explain what you see, doing accesses your phone’s For the past few years was to create new stress-test- your best to describe the camera and mic. He trans- dreams: “Oh my gosh. Look at that.” They had been mak- Anthony Putorti, a fre protec- ing requirements for those size of the fre, the type of mits live video of the fre ing a wide pass around the Bald and Eiler wildfres in the tion engineer at the National facepieces—but the data Put- couch, and anything else to the men who will be Lassen National Forest, trying to get out of the smoke so Institute of Standards and orti gathered turned out to that might be relevant. responding to it. they could see the dense plumes curling out of the top. The Technology and a former fre also be useful for determining postdoc, Neil Lareau, was sitting in the passenger seat investigator, has been work- fre characteristics after expo- operating a Doppler lidar sensor as they drove, and when ing on a test series examining sure. Now researchers are facepieces from the respi- working on ways fre investi- Present Future they popped out of the haze, he saw a low, thick layer of A computer-aided dispatch As the CAD determines rators frefghters wear to gators can use the fndings of smoke sliding along the ground in the opposite direction system (CAD) orders the what resources to send, an prevent smoke inhalation. The his study to reverse-engineer, trucks and special exper- autonomous drone—the of the wind. It was, he thought, a density current, a phe- lenses, which frefghters look based on gear damage after a tise (like hazmat or medical one docked in the clos- nomenon in which shade from smoke cools the ground through as they work, were frefght, the conditions of the resources) suggested by est of many “drone nests” below it, creating a temperature gradient not so difer- melting under certain extreme fre they’re fghting—which the information the dis- around the city—takes of ent from the cold fronts that appear on meteorological conditions. The original goal will help them fght it better. patcher collected. At the and fies to the coordi- forecasts. That’s what was making the smoke move in the frehouse, a crew deter- nates transmitted by your wrong direction: weather created by fre. mines a route and leaves. cellphone. This is not as crazy as it sounds. Fires release huge amounts of heat and water vapor into the atmosphere, the same factors that create rain clouds, winds, and convection currents—the ingredients of weather. Only because wildfres release Density Current: Smoke blocks sunlight from Present Future so much heat, the weather they create can be stronger and more extreme than even the forest foor, creating a low-lying layer of The captain in the pas- The drone locks its cam- dense, cool air that pushes smoke in unexpected senger seat of the frst eras on the structure hurricanes—updrafts fast enough to down a plane, smoke plumes full of debris, and directions. unit on scene gives a visual and fies repeated circles 100-mph fame blasts driven by wind and pockets of fuel. But we know surprisingly description over the radio. around it, ofering an ongo- little about how wildfres behave, which is why researchers such as Janice Coen, proj- Pyrocumulus Cloud: Hot air and water vapor Upon arrival, he gets out ing loop of 360s. It utilizes ect scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, released by combustion rise over a wildfre. The and does a “360,” literally standard cameras, but also are incorporating new data into combined weather–fre computer simulations that vapor condenses into clouds that can cause rain or running the perimeter of things like infrared, which could one day save lives. For example: When frefghters are on the less active side of lightning. the structure on fre and pick up hot spots not visi- reporting conditions. ble to a human fre captain. a fre, it can suddenly shift direction and run at them with 200-foot fames. “Gust Updraft: Heat creates crazy-powerful winds that fronts overwhelming the frefghters have been behind a number of fatalities,” can sweep skyward at up to 120 mph. Clements’ says Coen. When the models get good enough, they’ll be able to see them coming. team unwittingly few through one. “One of the radar scientists on the aircraft hit his head and Present Future started bleeding,” says Clements. “We got this text Firefghters connect to a Firefghters also jack where he said, ‘I’m bleeding for science, but we’re hydrant and start fghting into the fber hydrant—a okay.’*” the fre. Tactics are deter- connection to the neigh- mined by the initial size-up borhood’s broadband Horizontal Roll Vortex: Updrafts rotate along and adjusted based on the network at the hydrant. the ground in opposite directions (like log-rolling). experience of the men This provides the band- “They can lean over and collapse on frefghters,” inside. width to fy drones, send says Coen. live video to men inside, and run A.I. or machine learning Fire Whirl (a.k.a. Firenado): Winds swirl around on data they send out. hot, buoyant gases from the fre so they shoot up in a spiral pattern, then ignite once they reach an area with sufcient oxygen. A frenado in British In 2006, the Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Group at the Columbia sucked up (and melted) a frefghter’s National Institute of Standards and Technology built a spark- hose. throwing machine called the Standard Firebrand Generator (a.k.a. The Dragon). It lights things like wood chips on fre The Flamethrower (a.k.a. the Finger of Death): and passes the sparks through a size screen to create a fre- When a fre climbs a hill, sometimes it encounters brand shower like one from a real wildfre. In noncombustible wind tunnels at the Building a cache of unburnt fuel and shoots a fnger of fre Research Institute in Japan, researchers then test how well buildings resist the heat. (One about 300 feet at 100 mph that collapses in less fnding: Firebrands can ignite roofs by slipping under individual shingles.) NIST’s latest instru- than two seconds. “You can think of it like a fame- ment, the emberometer, which will be tested into the spring, consists of several of-the-shelf thrower that’s pointed along the ground,” says Coen.

cameras with certain color flters removed to track the frebrands escaping from actual fres. NAMEPHOTOGRAPH/ILLUSTRATION TEEKAY BY

88 Winter 2018–19 _ PopularMechanics.com ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALEXANDER WELLS PHOTOGRAPH/ILLUSTRATION BY TEEKAY NAME @PopularMechanics _ W i n t e r 2 0 1 8 – 1 9 89 away and I actually made a fully automatic MARCH 2016. On a sunny Bay Area Friday, soda-shooting machine gun that actually Jamie Hyneman is alone at M5 Industries, propelled them about 400 miles an hour.” a tinkerer’s dream of a workshop in south Hyneman piloted the machine around THIS IS NOT the traditional kind of leap to San Francisco that was for thirteen glorious the beach using the remote, shooting 7 Up make: Maybe this thing that’s typically used years the de facto headquarters of Myth- at a surfer and crushing beach cruisers like for this could actually be used for that. Or at Busters, one of the most successful reality cars at a monster truck rally. The broad least, it’s not a leap anyone else had made. shows in television history, of which he was treads hugged the sand, pivoting the robot No one else envisioned a pack of autonomous the walrus-mustached cohost. He’s alone to and fro at Hyneman’s whim. For the cli- tanks running down a wildfre. That’s why here a lot these days, now that the show is max, he cranked the remote control and sent some people are inventors, and some peo- over and the crew cleared out. He owns the the vending machine through a volleyball ple get a strange idea, the love child of a non space, and a lot of the MythBusters stuf is net and straight into the Pacifc Ocean. He sequitur and a lark, and dismiss it, because still here, pieces and parts and gear stacked was wearing scuba gear so he could retrieve Well that’s ridiculous and might not even in neatly labeled boxes from foor to ceiling. it—he had made a deal with the production work and anyway I’m late for a meeting and He’s giving an impromptu tour to a couple company that he’d get to keep the robot after what should we have for dinner tonight? of kids, showing them scary masks from his the shoot. days doing Hollywood special efects and a “I thought we were going to lose it,” he says. mechanical spider that’s taller than they are. “But just for why not, once they called cut, I BY 2015, Hyneman had an idea and was And then, in a well-lit workroom toward hit the stick all the way over for a second, and working on a prototype. What he didn’t have the back, he pulls out a drawing of what looks forward—and the thing came marching right was fnancial backing. Then he met Palmer like a tank. He gets serious—he’s always out of the water.” He took the 7 Up robot back Luckey at a venture capitalist’s picnic in serious, but something in his tone reveals to his workshop in San Francisco, sand still 2016. Luckey, of course, had founded Oculus that this is special. The tank, he says, is clinging to those big, wide treads. VR in 2012, built a revolutionary virtual- unmanned. It is saddled with massive water reality headset in his parents’ garage, and tanks and outftted with a remote-control sold the company to Facebook in 2014 for system that will allow it to be piloted directly $2.3 billion. But within a couple years of his into wildfires—the kind that can rage in HYNEMAN HAS one degree to his name, conversation with Hyneman, he was out of this state and others in the Northwest for and it is in Russian linguistics, from Indi- Oculus and getting ready to launch Anduril many months each year—spraying water ana University. Jamie Hyneman, creator of Industries. Anduril would be a diferent kind and saving the lives both of frefghters and one of the most feared robots on Robot Wars, of defense contractor. The traditional model, homeowners, a remote-control robotic frst Blendo—a saucerful of pikelets that crossed according to Luckey, is that companies frst responder. a lawnmower engine with a wok with sharp secure a huge defense contract, then go try Nothing like it exists, he says. objects—once ran a pet store. Jamie Hyne- to build something. Anduril would instead Just something he’s working on, he says. man was a Caribbean charter-boat captain. frst build things worthy of the Department Jamie Hyneman was a chef. of Defense, then sell them—by his estima- He is not what you’d call a linear thinker, tion a better process. ONE AFTERNOON IN 2003, Hyneman Jamie Hyneman. He wonders, and he arrives “We talked a bunch about projects that was standing on a film set on Hermosa at something. When he looked at those we wanted to be working on, if we could do Beach, in Los Angeles, wearing full scuba treads, what he saw was surface area. And anything, and I told him about some of my gear and holding a remote control. He was for some reason he can’t explain, he thought crazier stuf,” Luckey says. “And he told me surrounded by a crew flming a 7 Up com- of grass fres, and the fact that the most ef- he had this idea for a remote-controlled fre- mercial, for which Hyneman had been hired cient way to put out a fire was to stomp it fghting vehicle that was self-cooling.” to build a robot. “They wanted to have a 7 with a wet blanket—wet it and smother it. Anduril wanted in on Hyneman’s tank Up machine that was mobile and had tank He thought, Instead of some guy out there in part because it was a perfect test for vir- treads on it and would bring 7 Up to you, and in the field dousing fire with a sprayer, tual reality as Anduril wants to apply it. the thing gets a little aggressive by pushing maybe I could spray water on those treads Wildfres are chaotic: challenging terrain. its product on people by shooting cans out with all their surface area and roll right Smoke. Heat that’s invisible to human eyes, the slot,” he says. “So I got a little carried over the fames. even when it’s intense enough to cause a

90 Winter 2018–19 _ PopularMechanics.com “With a system like this you can start him, but that wasn’t quite his intention, but doing things that are radically diferent,” says that he understands may become the reality: Luckey. When you have instead of a truck a “I had the battalion chief for northern Cal- 1. WATER MONITORS— tank and instead of a driver a remote pilot, ifornia down here, and he was the one who high-powered water you can charge through the wall of fames. pointed out that it may well be that the most guns—follow the gaze and FOAM WATER DIESEL You can crush smoldering debris like tinfoil. important use for this thing may be cleanup. direction of remote pilots. This all puts an emphasis on heat resis- “So if we have something like this tank 2. EXTERNAL SPRAY- tance—which was a thorny problem. that is a range extender or a manpower ERS douse the treads in “There were just too many surfaces we extender, then that may well be the main water, creating a roll- had to protect,” says Newton. “Too many purpose for it. ing wet-blanket efect of smothering and cooling things. You know? From wiring to batter- “And, you know, we may well have issues action as the Sentry moves ies to controllers to electronic stuff and with the sensors.” across a fre scene. pumps. So many things. It was like, we can’t run a traditional heat-exchanger system on 3. INTERNAL SPRAYERS douse the entire inside of all these components. It’s just impossible. I IN LATE AUGUST, Hyneman, Newton, and the vehicle with a 50/50 mean, yeah, we could do it, but it would be two VR experts from Anduril gathered in mix of glycerin and water, crazy. So Jamie’s idea was, well . . . What if Sara McAllister, an engineer at the the shop to start up the vehicle, which was cooling components, we just spray water all over everything?” Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, nearly complete. It must have been twelve scrubbing the air of haz- Hyneman calls it The Rainstorm: The researches how fuel beds of difer- feet tall. Its surface covered in shiny alumi- ardous particulates, and inside of the tank is a maelstrom. A cool- ent materials burn (think grass fre num. Its haunches two fve-hundred-gallon preventing rust. versus forest fre). But big fres from ant that is a 50/50 mix of glycerin and water tanks. Over its left and right front corners a rich fuel bed are hard to study in 4. THE BRAIN BOX sprays continuously over the entire interior, controlled conditions, as their large there are professional-grade water monitors, houses the computers that so the vehicle can drive into a fre without its plumes of smoke can afect airfow also known as deluge guns, which can raise run the Sentry’s sensor electromechanical guts becoming chitlins. on the ground. So she simulates the and lower and pivot and drain those tanks package and remote- smoke efect under a big indoor control apparatus. Once the coolant absorbs the heat, it sinks completely in fewer than fve minutes. It is down into the vehicle’s bilge—it’s amphibious, chimney. “We make an artifcial ofcially called the Sentry. barrier by putting the chimney 5. A suite of TANKS house so it has one—which is located so the cool- Newton climbs up a ladder to the top. 1,000 gallons of water, above the fre, which then forces air ant’s heat is passed of to the thousand gallons “Track check!” he says. 100 gallons of fame- through the fuel bed,” she says. The of water in the tanks, after which it can be “Right track is clear,” one of the Anduril retardant foam, and 100 live on the Sentry’s exterior. a brief stretch if it were out of The entire Sentry is sheathed chimney has more than doubled the gallons of diesel fuel (for diesel fuel. in the same fabric used in prox- pumped back to the sprayers to rain again. rate of burning in some cases, mim- guys says. He walks to the other side. “Left running the engine, not 7. A set of ZERO MOTORCY- imity suits for frefghters and So what about the townspeople who have icking fres much bigger than what track is clear.” frefghting). CLES MOTORS, which deliver THE OUTER SHELL of the volcano explorers. It defects to climb inside the vehicle once it’s charged would otherwise be possible in a “I’m going to turn the air compressor on,” exceptional power for their size Sentry is made of polished alu- 95% of heat and is rated to lab-controlled burn. 6. CAMERAS—including through the wall of fames to rescue them? Newton says. and weight, drive the Sentry’s minum, which ofers extremely 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. infrared for sighting heat pumps and could potentially be high heat refectivity. They’ll be in the rainstorm too? “If you go “Air on!” comes a chorus of voices, fol- as well as visible fames— used to power the Sentry for in here to get rescued,” Hyneman says, “you lowed by the tenor thrum of the compressor. come out like you’ve been in a spa.” operate the valves, tested them on a manu- “Fuel pump on,” Newton says. facturer’s test board with great success, then “Engine on!” reignition. But what if terrain could be pickup-truck version. It had room in the back equipment for heavy industry and building brought them to the shop, to the real vehi- “Engine on!” mapped by lidar and heat by IR camera for water tanks, and because it was designed fre-breathing zoomorphic vehicles for eccen- JAMIE HYNEMAN is not precious when he cle—and nothing had worked. “Fuel pump on. Engine front on. Remote and all of it paired to high-resolution maps, to be airlifted, it was relatively light at 14,500 tric billionaires (not that they’re allowed to talks about his inventions. The inside of the Newton was able to replace one of the six control on. Starting engine.” then stitched together into a seamless vir- pounds. Hyneman bought one in 2017 from talk about it). They were perfect for working vehicle is deluged by “the rainstorm.” The with a valve from the test kit. One. Then he The roar of the diesel explodes off the tual environment that pilots could remotely an Army surplus store in Pennsylvania and on the modifcations Hyneman had devised, vehicle’s electronics live in the “brain box.” found out Hyneman had an extra valve in his walls of the shop. There’s a computer set up navigate using a VR headset? Hyneman saw stashed it in his shop in San Francisco. which were myriad—some straightforward, The entire vehicle is wrapped in a tailored shop in San Francisco, across the Bay from on a workbench, with a virtual-reality head- immediately how that could be great for When Anduril decided they wanted in, some eccentric. The M548 went up on blocks suit of heat-resistant fabric, which he calls Oakland. He raced to get it. That gave him set and two hand controls, each operating fghting fres. Anduril saw how it could be and that they would be designing a system in the crease of two towering sets of shelves, “fre jammies.” The tube of fre jammies that two working servos, enough to control one one side of the vehicle—treads and monitors. great for other defense applications. of VR controls, digitizing the functionality maybe thirty feet high, which walled of dif- wraps a deluge gun looks like an “elephant’s tank tread and the throttle. “Gear on!” So, in 2017, Anduril bought in. Hyneman of a ffty-year-old military vehicle became a ferent work spaces. On top, still for a dozen trunk,” and at one point, considering how And then it was time for the demo. When the joystick of the left hand con- is a contractor. If he can hand of a physical necessity. A tank in a virtual environment is years, were the treads of the 7 Up robot. people being rescued will pass through the fre When their guest arrived, they posi- trol is actuated, a waterfall roar arises from object to Anduril, his work will be done. worthless if a computer can’t work its throt- jammies to get inside, he considers a circular tioned him on one side of the tank. They fred the spinning of the left tread. Same with the tle. Hyneman enlisted Jim Newton, a former hole that will cinch shut, like a kind of “anus.” it up and used the remote controls to bring right. When the virtual pilot looks left, the science advisor on MythBusters who went IMAGINE THIS: You are a wildland frefghter it to life. Tread turning. Throttle roaring. Of monitors pivot to follow his feld of view. In HYNEMAN’S FIRST IDEA was simply to run on to found the TechShop maker spaces, to battling an expanding blaze in the woods course, the other side of the tank was kaput. the shop, the tank is up on blocks. In virtual tracks around a giant water tank. Then one devise, program, and build the network of around a small town. The winds shifted sud- IN MAY, there was a night when Newton “Oh, that’s really cool!” the guy said, reality, it’s in a forest of faming trees. In vir- of his collaborators suggested looking at sensors and microcontrollers that would denly overnight, and no one was able to warn stayed at the shop in Oakland until mid- none the wiser. tual reality, the pilot watches from above as M113 armored personnel carriers, giant give the tank a digital doppelgänger. the people. You’re in a wildland fire truck, night, and returned way too early. A big the tank stalks a fickering yellow prey. When people-moving tanks the military has been He also moved the M548 to an industrial which is pretty rugged, but there’s only one demo was set for eight in the morning. the pilot pulls a trigger on the hand control— using since Vietnam. They can carry and fabrication shop in Oakland, Cooper Gray road into the town and it’s a wall of flames He’d been programming the servopneu- THE OTHER THING about the way Jamie Hyne- Well, they haven’t actually rigged the tow an excessive amount of weight and travel Robotics, that he’d worked with in the past. and the heat from the fre has ripped up the matic valves that would allow the tank to be man talks about his inventions is that you monitors to fre yet. They’re still in a shop, 40 mph. But there were questions about the It’s the kind of place where every spare inch asphalt and layered the roadbed with smol- remote-controlled. These were the six valves can tell he is open to new ideas, and to suc- after all. legality of owning an armored military vehi- of shelf space—and there’s lots of shelving— dering debris. Even if you could get the truck that would operate the tank’s real controls in cess, and to failure. It’s in the way he tosses “Engine of!” cle. That led them to a non-armored variant, seems to be stacked with scrap metal; where to the trapped townspeople, how could you the absence of human hands: moving treads, in qualifers that begin “We may well . . .” to “Gear of!” the M548 tracked cargo carrier—basically a the crew is equally adept at customizing justify the risk to the driver? goosing the throttle. He’d built a circuit to indicate a possibility that has occurred to “Air of!”

92 Winter 2018–19 _ PopularMechanics.com ILLUSTRATION BY GREG MAXSON @PopularMechanics _ W i n t e r 2 0 1 8 – 1 9 93 “WHEN I’M PROBLEM-SOLVING with HONEYWELL STEDAIR DUPONT NOMEX NANO something, I have, efectively, a CAD PREVENT HOOD THERMAL LINER program in my head that’s like a room More than 100 small carcino- Made from spinning, rather that has specifc qualities to it that I go genic particulates are found than weaving, nano fbers, this in burning homes. They can fabric is 90% air. That makes it to some deal of efort to populate. Tex- accumulate in fatty tissues, like 10% lighter than previous heat tures and smells, something like that. those around the brain. This shields, and 40% thinner, and it With the intent of creating attach- hood’s fabric flters out 99.99% protects against steam burns ment points for my brain. Things There was a time when a of them before they make it to by not over-absorbing moisture. aren’t invented in limbo or in a vac- frefghter in a burning build- the neck and head. Plus, the fact that it is inherently uum. They have a context. So I try to ing got fresh air by smashing 3M SCOTT AIR-PAK X3 PRO HURST JAWS OF LIFE Available: Now fame-resistant means the ben- intentionally populate that context a window, sticking his head A self-contained breathing S 799E2 CUTTER efts don’t wash of. out, and gulping down a few apparatus that keeps fre- As the metal in cars gets RESPONDER-X Available: Now for them . . . I became interested in this breaths. Then someone devel- fghters comfortable and stronger, so too must the Using accelerometers and just because I’ve got these big tracks oped a respirator, and the carcinogen-free with improved tools that cut them to extri- triangulation of radio frequen- MSA CAIRNS XF1 HELMET left over from a commercial. What health and safety of the guys QWAKE C-THRU harness fexion and ease of cate us. This battery-powered cies, ResponderX tracks up to Unlike traditional fre helmets, are they good for? And I start bring- running toward danger took Uses infrared sensors and augmented reality to cleaning. Bluetooth con- cutter can cut through a 1,000 frefghters each car- this design looks more like a ing them into the CAD program inside a big leap forward. We’re restore visibility in a smoke-flled room. Statistical nectivity allows an incident solid 1*¾-inch bar of steel rying their own transmitters. pilot’s helmet. That allows fre- my head. What else could it do? Well, still making leaps like that, analysis processes infrared sensor data to display commander to monitor heavy 12 times on a single charge. Incident commanders can look fghters to move and operate whether it’s refning fabrics to edges of objects: walls, doors, furniture, and even at a map of a building to know in smaller spaces, and better you could stamp out a fire, because breathing, and warns if elec- The eight-inch-wide jaws can fend of cancer-causing par- people. In the future the masks will be able to collab- tronics are failing due to heat. even cut through a modern an endangered frefghter’s protects lower areas of the that’s a lot more efficient. And then ticulates or using AR to render orate, creating a foor plan of a building. This could Available: Now high-strength-steel B-post exact foor and location. head. Optional integrations the whole thing avalanches. Less water smoke transparent. Here’s mean things like Google Maps–style walking direc- in a single cut. And the cutter Available: 1 to 2 years for include lights, a communica- resources, hotter, drier conditions— the cutting edge. tions to lead a disoriented frefghter to safety. weighs only 55 pounds. structural frefghters; less tion system, and visors. this becomes a thing. What could we Available: 12 to 18 months Available: Now than a year for wildland Available: Now do to minimize water use? What could we do to make sure you can optimize that? That’s what the Sentry is, over High-rise buildings are designed the course of a long period of time.” to make it very unlikely that a fre spreads beyond the foor it started on. Even so: Put 50 IN LATE SEPTEMBER, a fatbed truck stories between the fre and the AUGUST, DURING THE CARR FIRE—one of northern Califor- chartered by Anduril pulled into the trucks on the ground, and things nia’s largest wildfires this year, which the Menlo Park Fire shop’s lot. Hyneman drove the Sen- like water pressure and con- District, from the heart of Silicon Valley, helped fght—Jack taining smoke get a lot trickier. try, now of its blocks, onto the trailer. McCandless managed to get a piece of drone-detection equip- Here’s how the FDNY fghts fres The truck drove it down to Anduril in New York City’s highest sky- ment hooked up to a statewide command center. A specialist HQ in southern California, where the scrapers, according to battalion with the police department had been unable to fgure it out for a month; McCandless VR will be perfected and field tests chief Tom Richardson: got it up and running within a few minutes. “Now we’re getting calls from members of will begin. the statewide system: ‘Oh, this is great, how did you make that work?’ ” battalion chief For Hyneman, it’s been, roughly, 1. Fire trucks are equipped with Tom Calvert says. “It was just having Jack.” high-pressure pumps capable ten years of thinking about it, and of pressures up to 600 pounds “Drones are a cutting-edge technology, so there’s a lot of bugs,” McCandless says. “I one year of building. per square inch, which get water help smooth that out. Firefghters expect it to work the frst time, every time.” The nine- “Yep,” he says. “I’m done.” from the ground to 30 or more teen-year-old, a paid intern and drone technician, has been working with the fre district stories up. for three years. He was introduced to Calvert by a mutual friend, just as MPFD was getting its drone program going. “At the time, he was working out at NASA Ames for a company 2. Giant positive-pressure ABOUT THE RUSSIAN linguistics. that does satellite stuf,” Calvert says. “He was all of sixteen.” ventilation (PPV) fans are strate- It started with Slavic music. That gically placed where their airfow The Menlo Park drone program got started in April 2014, after Calvert saw a drone at was an ofshoot from an interest in will contain smoke on the foor another frefghter’s bachelor party and realized it would be an important tool for emer- classical music. And that? “It had of origin: They can create enough gency workers. Drones outftted with cameras help frefghters get a better idea of the something to do with a girlfriend pressure in an internal stairwell scope and damage to the surrounding area or perform search-and-rescue operations. whose father was interested in clas- that smoke cannot escape into Today, MPFD personnel are in demand as experts on integrating technology into fre the hallway or other rooms, but sical music,” Hyneman says, in the response. And despite (or maybe because of) his youth, McCandless is a crucial part of is forced out the windows. shop to help make adjustments as the program, which includes a feet of fourteen DJI drones of various sizes and capabili- the fire jammies are being tailored Upper foors 3. If fre has spread down a ties. He has an intuitive ability for getting the drones to cooperate and interconnect with on a small Singer sewing machine. Ground level hallway or superheated the air, other frefghting tech, and he also fabricates custom accessories for the MPFD drones “That started me in that direction in frefghters will use a high-rise from his home workshop, in a role Calvert says is “basically research and development.” the frst place.” He pauses for a sec- nozzle, an angled, structured He’s added mounts for devices like gas meters and Geiger counters. He’s currently test- nozzle that allows them to attack ond, considering the long, strange fames from the foor below ing a mechanism that could throw life preservers or lifelines during water rescues. chain of cause-and-efect, problem- through a window. Once the “We’re using this technology in a way that has never been used in our industry, in a solving analysis and revision, which air is cooled, another team of way it wasn’t intended to be used,” Calvert says. “That’s where Jack is very helpful. He’s some people simply call a lifetime. frefghters can then attack the an expert at this stuf. We compare him a lot to Q in the James Bond flms, who makes “Way to get access to the girl, I guess.” fames from the same foor. all the gadgets. That’s what Jack is for us.”

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