Fire Extinction and Fire Prevention

In the TV evening news of April 15, 2019 the fire of cathedral Notre Dame in Paris was reported which continued for about 5 hours. 4 firemen on high fire ladders, 2 on each side, sprayed heavy water beams to the top of the fire. This had no effect, just produced vapor which escapes due to its density 4x lower than air. I saw no chance to contact the fire manager to propose to throw the fire hoses into the fire: the low-end water vapor would stop the air supply and extinguish the fire in few minutes.

The house of Frank J. Bruni before the North-Bay Fire of October 10. 2017 (Bracken Court 2004, Santa Rosa CA 95403-1784, insured value 750’000$)

The North-East area of Santa Rosa after the fire of October 10, 2017.

The recent catastrophic fires in California, Australia and southern Europe have destroyed forests and steppes including wildlife, city areas and numerous houses and caused huge damages and tragedies. There is fear that number and dimensions of fires will increase due to climate change. This project describes novel approaches of fire extinction in buildings and to prevent the progress of fires outside the settlements. The principle is demonstrated with the fire of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris April 15, 2019.

Fires are a common threat to mankind, to nature and cultural heritage, to forests and steppes including wildlife, to buildings including habitants, and to historical buildings and churches. A prominent terrifying example was the fire of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris April 15, 2019. Despite the intensive water flushes from the top the intense fire with high flames continued for about five hours whereas with a novel approach it could have perhaps been stopped in 30 minutes.

There are three prerequisites for fire: 1) fuel which can be solid, liquid, gas or gas from decomposition of solid, 2) high temperature and 3) air (oxygen). The goals of firefighters and of applying fire extinguishers are to separate fuel from air and to cool the fire by powerful water splashing or by fire-extinguishing fluid. In case of Notre Dame the water flushing from top, as one could see for hours in TV, had practically no effect since it produced water vapor which has much lower density than air and thus escaped and did not reach the burning wooden beams and cool the fire. Finally, the fire stopped when most of the fuel, the wooden beams, had burnt, the high flames had stopped, and the water could reach the glowing fire.

In this project a novel approach to extinguish fire based on the principle of separating fuel from air was developed for efficient extinguishing fire inside buildings and localized fires outside, and from preventing the advancement of wildfire in forests and steppes. Specific measures will prevent the progress of fire to approach housings and cities. The costs of these measures are small compared to the lives and values at risk. Patent application in progress.