Giant Blimps Could Rain Over Wildfires

ByABC News
June 27, 2002, 10:51 AM

July 5 -- Firefighters still battling the wildfires in the Western United States could sure use some more help from above.

Air tankers and helicopters that can drop water or flame-retardant chemicals have provided some relief. But some companies think such airborne attacks are just a drop in the bucket compared to their proposed future tools.

Wetzone Engineering in Huntington Beach, Calif., thinks it has a surefire idea. To fight big forest blazes, why not use a big blimp?

Engineers at the company propose designing and building a 1,000-foot-long airship that could carry about 264,000 gallons of water nearly 100 times the capacity of the C-130 transport planes currently in use by the U.S. Forest Service.

Steady Manmade Rain

An array of nozzles slung underneath the dirigible would control the flow of water and could drop nearly 53,000 gallons per hour. Water cannons also mounted underneath could provide targeted water delivery to particular

Officials at Wetzone say that aside from the huge water capacity, their blimp offers other advantages over traditional air bombers.

Since it's noncombustible helium that gives the gigantic airship its lift, the proposed blimp could loiter over a forest hot spot much longer than any airplane or helicopter. In fact, the engineers even designed a way for the blimp to refill its voluminous internal water tanks without leaving the scene of the flames.

The engineers' designs call for a special "catch basin" to be installed along the length of the blimp's top. Passing aerial tankers such as C-130s and Chinook helicopters could then fly over the blimp and dump their water loads into the blimp.

The result, says Wetzone, would be an aerial vehicle that could create a nearly continuous artificial rainfall.

A Big Bag of Wind?

But others aren't convinced that the Wetzone bird would fly.

Carl Bambarger, aviation program leader for the U.S. Forest Service's technology and development center in San Dimas, Calif., says firefighting blimps have been proposed and rejected years before for several reasons.