8 SEPTEMBER 21-27, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | NEWS | LETTERS | CONTENTS | prevention space, but little is being done to help put fi res out. If we can bring a vehicle that can deliver the same amount of retar- dant as a large air tanker but can operate on a continuous basis, it could give incident commanders radically new options.” As Wolf refi ned his concepts, the fi res kept coming, driven by climbing temperatures, droughts and stronger winds. FEMA reported that in 2022, the U.S. saw 66,255 wildfi res that burned 7,543,403 acres. In Colorado last year, 835 wildfi res burned 45,732 acres. “These fi res should be a really signifi cant red fl ag,” LeRoy Westerling, a climate and wildfi re scientist at the University of Cali- fornia, Merced, recently told the Washington Post. “All over the world, this is happening right now…a warning sign that something’s happened that we need to take into account.” Wolf’s home has been visited by coyotes, cougars and mountain lions. He once found a bear rummaging in his garage. At the foot of the steps leading up to the main fl oor, where many people might have plants or statues, are two large fi re extinguishers, part of the thirty prominently featured at his home. The living room’s windows provided Wolf a broad view of the Marshall fi re, driven across the Front Range by howling winds. A small stairway leads to Wolf’s offi ce, set up for the interviews he does with News Nation, CNN and other media outlets. Sound baffl es on the walls evoke a recording studio, and a ring light illuminates his face when on camera. At Stunt Ranch, he once trained CNN anchors in how to handle fi rearms. In October 2021, when the story broke in Bonanza City, New Mexico, about the fatal shooting during the fi lming of the Alec Baldwin movie Rust, CNN called Wolf for commentary. On his desk is the same model as the deadly weapon: a black, single-action Colt 45. He picks up the unloaded gun, spins the chamber, cocks the pistol, and delicately puts his fi nger on the trigger, showing how very little pressure could fi re the gun. Plaintiffs in the case hired him as an expert witness for the trial this December. Bald, trim and bespectacled, Wolf could easily be cast as a scientifi c genius in a motion picture. He does a killer German accent. He wears a dark-blue shirt with “Team Wildfi re” across the front and “Wolf” on the back. He has on cargo pants full of…cargo. If his garage resembles a hardware store, his offi ce is a techie’s paradise, with gadgets everywhere. As he speaks, he seamlessly bounces from science to fundraising to real estate to media to tech to public relations to teaching science to whatever comes next. His focus is intense, and when he pauses after delivering a monologue on one subject, it takes him about a second to reboot. In some ways, he brings to mind a com- puter — wired for constant input and output. On his computer screen, he calls up a pic- ture of a young girl wearing her dead father’s fi reman’s hat. Since 1992, 522 fi refi ghters have been killed in the line of duty. “No fi refi ghter should be put in a position to die while doing their job,” he says, wiping at his cheek and turning away from the girl’s image. “Every place now has the potential to be a Maui or a Marshall fi re, so we have to do better and use technology that can go where fi refi ghters shouldn’t have to.” Annually, U.S. wildfi res cause $350 bil- lion in losses and release billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Reducing them by 10 percent would decrease it by emissions equivalent to that of 174 million cars. As fi res have recently intensifi ed, so has controversy about managing America’s natu- ral resources. Many believe that the fi re suppression work of the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management during the past century has led to overgrown, un- healthy forests that threaten wildlands and communities. In Colorado and far beyond, a bitter dispute exists between ecologists who think the forests should be left alone and conservationists or entrepreneurs who feel they should be cleared of dying or dead wood. On one side are those like Josh Schlossberg of Longmont, a Colorado steering commit- tee member of the Eco-Integrity Alliance. “While wildfi re has been a natural and essential process in our western forests for millennia,” Schlossberg says, “84 percent in the U.S. nowadays are started by humans, including nearly all of Colorado’s largest. … Our government is wasting billions of our tax dollars logging public lands, which studies in Colorado show does nothing to slow large wildfi res and can instead make them burn hotter and spread fl ames faster, punching thousands of miles of new roads into the heart of the forest while leaving communities to fend for themselves. … “The entire premise of ‘overgrown’ for- ests that somehow ‘benefi t’ from logging or in any way ‘protect’ communities from wildfi re has been challenged by independent science, while demonstrating that agency- funded studies have deliberately distorted their fi ndings to support logging,” he adds. On the other side are those like James Gaspard, who runs the Berthoud-based company Biochar Now. “The opposition wants to leave everything alone,” Gaspard says. “We’re saying take away the excess dead wood and restore the natural forest. All the rotting trees are putting more CO2 into the air. The reality is that we have a sick forest, and the dying and diseased wood needs to be removed to make it healthy.” Wolf comes down on that second side of the argument. “Taking out unhealthy trees increases the distance between trees and makes it harder for fi res to spread,” he says. “Harvesting trees and turning them into lumber guarantees that the carbon they have sequestered is retained, as opposed to the risk of having them burn and release all their carbon back into the atmosphere. Smart money knows when to hold on to your winnings.” July 2023 was the hottest month on re- cord — the same month that Canada suffered a record wildfi re season. Firefi ghting, Wolf believes, is not a problem best left up to government. “Private industry,” he says, “is leading innovation on the wildfi re front.” But he struggles with some of those innovations. “We’ve spent millions of dollars on satel- lites, cameras and sensors, and they have their purpose in locating fi res, but here’s the question: How many satellites does it take to put out a fi re? How many sensors? No amount. Because data doesn’t douse fi res,” he notes. Echoing the sentiments he teaches chil- dren about physics, he adds, “Fires are a physical phenomenon in the real world. When you have a physical problem, you need a physical, not a virtual, solution. That’s where the Hurricane comes in.” After creating the specs for his proof of concept for CloudBurst, Wolf began look- ing for larger used jet engines, which can be purchased for around $30,000 from a jet engine graveyard in Arizona. “Just because an old engine is no longer allowed to take to the skies doesn’t mean it can’t put out fi res,” he says. He reached out to Tim Draper, a re- nowned venture capital investor, who put together $500,000 to fund the Storm Cloud and the CloudBurst prototype. A fi re needs four components to keep burning: heat, oxygen, fuel and chemical reactions. The Hurricane technology is designed to get rid of them all. Affi xed to the engine is a cylin- drical “mist injection chamber” containing 180 tiny nozzles that infuse the jet exhaust with powerful fi re suppressants. On contact with extreme heat, the water-based suppres- sant forms steam, which displaces oxygen. Evaporative cooling reduces heat, and the forceful exhaust blows away fuels (sticks, brush, fallen leaves and undergrowth). Other chemistries halt the reactions. The single-engine CloudBurst can be placed on off-road vehicles or in pickup beds, giving it far more fl exibility than a fi re truck. It can navigate between houses in neighbor- hoods and tight alleys or go deep into the woods to attack fi res that conventional equip- ment, and human beings, often can’t reach. It’s designed to save lives, and consumes a fraction of the water employed by conventional tools to suppress the same amount of fi re. The top wind speed of the Maui fi re was around 80 mph. The full-size Hurricane will use several large jet engines mounted on logging vehicles and can create 250 mph gales strong enough to blow back a fi re and shift its direction. “An airplane,” Wolf says, “can drop re- tardant on a fi re, but then has to fl y off to reload, often returning to an entirely new set of conditions, and they can only fl y safely during daylight hours, weather permitting. We can attack fi re round the clock, in any conditions, as long as we have water and diesel. Firefi ghters are American heroes, but they’re victims of a lack of good technology.” Wolf has one other tool at his disposal. “We’ll use Artifi cial Intelligence to play chess with the fi re,” he says. “Think Wildfi re GPT. AI can intake tons of real-time data from sensors on our trucks. It can make predictions about fi re movement, but that’s not new. The trick is continuously formulating the perfect suppression plan, based on what collection of fi refi ghting assets you have available and what you’re working to protect.” He was starting to think big. “Steve Jobs was once asked how he could possibly compete with the likes of AT&T and Motorola,” Wolf notes. “He said that he didn’t need to compete with them, he just needed to invent something that made them obsolete.” In 2022, Team Wildfi re was launched and business leader Andy Amalfi tano joined Wolf’s efforts. Dan Eamon quit as Long- mont’s emergency management director to become part of the startup, and Jamie Brandess was being considered for a position with the company. Needing more funding, Wolf applied to Techstars, a business accel- erator program that connects entrepreneurs, investors, corporations and city govern- ments. After providing him with intensive business training, it invested $120,000 and has committed another $150,000. He ap- proached Santa Fe’s Cottonwood Technol- ogy Fund, which committed to lead Team Wildfi re’s next funding round with $2 mil- lion. He’s in talks with the Venture Fund Division of Denver Angels and MUUS Cli- mate Partners. In the summer of 2022, with the CloudBurst prototype built, Wolf and his team took it to Boulder’s Fire Training Center for a demo (online videos show what it can do). “If we don’t get this kind of technology into the fi eld fast, we have no chance against the fi res coming our way,” said Greg Schwab, chief of the Boulder Rural Fire Department, following the demonstration. Then came the fi re in Maui. As Wolf viewed the devastation on television, he was certain that a fl eet of Hurricanes would have made a signifi cant difference. “Winds drove those fi res,” he says, “so the solution is twofold: Push back against adverse winds with stronger winds, and use the jet engines to quickly lay Blowback continued from page 6 continued on page 10 The Marshall fi re destroyed over 1,000 homes in December 2021. GETT Y IMAGES/MILEHIGHTRAVELER
