retardant v suppressant (follow-up)

Last week, I was writing about retardant v suppressant here. Let’s just say that I was wondering about when to use the term fire retardant and when to use the term fire suppressant. To be honest, I had forgotten that some of the information that I was looking for on retardant v suppressant is here in this blog, written over two years ago. What I am going to do is to spend a little time with what I wrote two years ago, and do some additional reading and revisit retardant v suppressant. However, I do want to briefly address the question that I raised last week.

In the meantime as I understand it, foams and gels (water enhancers) are suppressants, suppressing the fire. The Martin Mars, Canadair CL-215/415 (aka super scoopers) and some Helicopters with buckets and/or tanks (e.g. type 2 helicopters are among the aircraft using water/foam (usually clear). Retardant on the other hand (usually red in color) retards or slows the fire. Some of the aircrafts using retardant include but are not limited to CAL FIRE’s S-2T’s, P-2s and P-3s.

The US Forest Service has a page with some definitions that you might useful. In addition, you might want to read an article I posted in March 2009 on the differences between retardant and foam.

As I said, I’ll be writing more about retardants v suppressants, just not quite sure when. Tomorrow, I will be starting a series based on some time I spent last December watching the annual inspection of a Cessna 172 (aka a trainer).