Sonic firefighting technology shown to Bay Area fire crews

[00:00:00]Now, meantime, in the East Bay, Concord firefighters got their first look at new technology that can put out fires using sound instead of water. And while it's still in development, John Ramos reports it's already sparking interest as a potential new tool in firefighters' arsenal.

[00:00:19]When a home or wildland area catches fire, it is the first instinct of any firefighter to grab a water hose and get to work. But just as the nature of wildfire is changing in California, so is the technology to fight it.

[00:00:36]Water has always been the primary tool of firefighters for doing their jobs. So when they met at the Confire Training Center, it may have seemed like a brave new world.

[00:00:46]>> It does go back to the science, you know, we've you know, with the fire triangle of if you were disturb or remove the oxygen or the air, uh the fire will go out. Uh we've just always used water, you know, to extinguish fires. So a unique concept and uh I'm glad we were able to host this event today to see what the possibilities are.

[00:01:04]That unique concept is using ultra-low sound waves as a way to extinguish a fire. It was just a theory until 2015 when a pair of students at George Mason University demonstrated the world's first sonic fire extinguisher. Uh we're here we're just going to test out our our device that we use >> This video ignited a whole new way of thinking about fire suppression. And a company called Sonic Fire Tech showed off what it is capable of doing with a live demonstration of a simulated kitchen grease fire. A sensor near the ceiling recognizes the heat from a fire and then the sonic blast kicks in.

[00:01:43]The fire is reduced and then extinguished completely. It feels like the equipment is blowing air, but that would only make the fire grow. Instead, the existing air in the room is being shoved around by the sonic waves. Wind is introducing new oxygen, right? So we're taking the same oxygen molecules and vibrating them back and forth past the fire. So it's trying to get a hold of them and it can't, so it it goes out.

[00:02:07]One idea is to outfit new homes with heat sensors and sonic emitters so every room is protected. One house destroyed in the Altadena fire is being rebuilt as a pilot project for the technology. But it also has wildland fire uses. The company showed off a backpack model that can be used by wildfire ground crews to put out small ember fires, but with one huge advantage. What they're using now is these 5-gallon water backpacks which run out pretty quickly and then they have to have a water tanker follow them around so they can keep refilling them.

[00:02:38]Our system does the same thing but with a battery that lasts hours.

[00:02:42]Fire Inspector Derek Burman was first in line to try out the backpack prototype.

[00:02:47]He hadn't even heard of it until a few days ago. Oh, no, this is new to me. Uh we got you know, we got told about it about a week ago and we saw like a brief video and it seemed pretty pretty neat.

[00:02:57]We saw the uh the the backpack system go off and I thought that was pretty interesting and curious to see where it goes from here.

[00:03:04]Everyone is curious about that. In fact, the company CEO says the biggest challenge currently is to get people to view the product for what it can do today rather than imagine what it may do in the future.

[00:03:16]But with the threat of wildfire growing so quickly, it doesn't feel like there's a lot of time to waste.

[00:03:22]Now, John tells us at this point the technology is only meant to supplement a normal water sprinkler system. The idea is to try and put out small fires before the sprinklers kick in and potentially avoid costly water damage repairs.