High Altitude balloons help fight Idaho wildfires

Fighting wildfires from 60,000 feet in the stratosphere. Firefighters have a new tool courtesy of a partnership between the US Forest Service and NASA.

• High-altitude balloons are a new tool being used to fight fires.
• The US Forest Service has partnered with NASA to use remote-controlled helium balloons that can hover high above fire scenes for days.

( Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a balloon? High Altitude balloons have been around for decades, but new technology has caught the attention of the US Forest Service. Technology to keep the electronics working at that altitude. They have now teamed with NASA to use remote-controlled helium balloons that can hover high above fire scenes for days.

Sean Triplett works with a division of NIFC that is using this new technology here in Idaho. I asked Sean what happened before the balloons. “Prior to this year using this high-altitude balloon how you have located these fires and vehicles? Just through voice communication. So now we have eyes on it? Yep. That’s a big advantage visualization.”

On the Flight Radar 24 app on your phone it pulls up all the flights around the world, and here in the US. If you go over to Idaho, specifically in Valley County, you can see one plane and this round figure, and when you touch it it shows a high-altitude balloon flying at 60 thousand feet sending information to firefighters on the ground.

“This year we started looking for potential opportunities to test out the package and get it up over a fire it happened to be here in Idaho some lightening these fires here and so they launched from Baker City it got up in the stratosphere and they're able to park it over an incident.”

A company out of South Dakota can remotely control the balloons, all they need to know is where to go.

“We give them targets like the Snag fire and they can set the balloon over it and they loiter and stay over the fire it doesn’t stay in one place it moves up and down to find current wind currents and stays in the area."

The bottom line, these balloons offer better communication and better visuals among firefighters on the ground, keeping things safer and more efficient.