Wildland Firefighters: staying safe - fire shelters

Aerial wildland firefighters do what they do in order to help and support the wildland firefighters on the ground (aka ground pounders) contain and control the wildfire. They do this by putting the retardant or water/foam where the ground pounders need it most. From time to time I want to remind myself and those of you who find your way to this blog about the important work that wildland firefighters on the ground do to keep us safe. My intent in this article is to talk a little about what I have learned about one specific piece of safety equipment that wildland firefighters carry, the fire shelter.

After I first got interested in wildland firefighting in the Fall of 2008, it did not take me long to learn about fire shelters that wildland firefighters carry, these shelters are only deployed as a last resort. I wrote and article on this blog about fire shelters on Aug. 10, 2009, I urge you to take a few moments and review some of the information in that article. I believe that much of the information in that article is still applicable and you might want to take a look at the video of the Santiago Fire Shelter Deployment (with a happy ending).

A few months later, in May 2010, I posted an article here, with a video showing some of the training that wildland firefighters do with their shelters. I understand that the video makes it look a lot easier than it is.

I'm not sure that there is much more about fire shelters that I can say at this time, except to stress that a wildland fire fighter's fire shelter may be the most important piece of equipment that they carry. I did find a nice, but albeit long video (25 minutes plus) about the new generation fire shelter. I think the video is meant to be a training video, however I learned a lot from watching this video. I thought that some of you might enjoy watching this 25 minute video. 

Direct link to video.