Owning the weather: The secret to fighting wildfires, says Hollywood innovator Steve Wolf

With climate change accelerating the global wildfire crisis, governments are desperate. In the US alone, wildfires cause more than $350 billion in damage annually, and the toll will increase 30% by 2050, as more areas see higher temperatures, stronger winds, and drier conditions.  

North of the border, Canadian wildfires continue to rage, their impact spilling southward. New York City was enveloped in eerie orange smoke, harming the health of people all along the East coast. Firefighters struggle to contain wildfires, many of them using the same tools they did centuries ago: shovels, rakes, and axes. They risk their lives every time they face a fire, with 522 wildland firefighters killed from 1990 to 2020. While aerial firefighting can reach areas inaccessible to ground crews, it’s inefficient, costing up to $200 to put out a single foot of fire. 

According to Steve Wolf, an inventor, volunteer firefighter, and pyrotechnics expert who has created special effects for Hollywood productions, the weather, particularly the wind, is the by far the largest factor influencing fire behavior. So the best way to manage large fires would be to control the weather. And while there’s currently no way to control weather over wide areas, Wolf has developed a technology that creates intense local weather that can push back fires and stop them from advancing.  

“Firefighters told me they would need a hurricane to fight some of these fires, but rely on hand tools instead… when a movie director tells me they need a hurricane, I build synthetic hurricanes for them. So I wondered why we couldn't take the tech we use in movies, and adapt it for firefighting, by building a hurricane on wheels,” Wolf says.  

This idea led Wolf to start Team Wildfire, which has prototypes that use jet engines to generate intense, precision-directed, hurricane-grade counterwinds, to suppress fires where they are most vulnerable. They use a specialized mist chamber to add water and flame retardants to jet exhaust, mimicking the effect of powerful storms. 

 According to Wolf, this science attacks the four components of fire – fuel, oxygen, heat, and chemical reactions. Team Wildfire's jets can push 250 mph winds to blow away combustible material (fuels), and convectively remove heat. Mist increases humidity and lowers oxygen, while generating tremendous evaporative cooling. And retardants prevent the chemical reactions that create fire. 

Team Wildfire is building various size units for different situations. Prototypes of smaller versions are undergoing testing. The largest version, the Hurricane, will carry up to four jet engines and be mounted on mountain-capable logging vehicles, allowing them to go deep into wooded areas, taking the fight to the fire. 

Wildfires release more than 8 billion tons of CO2 annually. Reducing wildfires by just 10% would decrease CO2 emissions equal to the carbon released by 174 million cars. And every acre of forest saved results in 375 tons of CO2 sequestered in trees. 

“The ultimate carbon sequestration technology is a tree. Trees bind billions of tons of carbon into their wood, and do it using only sun and rain. I doubt we’ll invent anything better. We can keep carbon in trees by stopping them from burning,” Wolf says. 

 Team Wildfire is quickly closing a $3.5M seed round, which will be used to build larger prototypes, conduct beta testing, and demonstrate the tech to fire agencies. 

Once manual versions are perfected, the team will build autonomous systems using AI. “Sensor suites will monitor temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, slope, fuels, soil moisture, and other variables. AI will use fire suppression algorithms to optimize fire attack plans, and update them instantly as conditions change, vastly improving our ability to reduce fire damage.” 

“The best place from which to attack a fire is right in front of it. But that’s too dangerous for humans, so we fight fires sub-optimally, from the flanks and the rear. Robotic fire-fighting machines could work from any position, without endangering firefighters,” Wolf says. 

While Wolf knows that Team Wildfire could fast become a multi-billion dollar venture, that’s not his motivation. “How many kids have to lose a firefighting parent because we pit people against infernos instead of technology? This keeps me up at night, and spurs me into the shop at daybreak because getting to market even one day sooner could make a world of difference in someone’s life.”