Emergency fire shelters can save lives, in some conditions

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — After flames trapped 14 firefighters in California and they had to use last-resort fire shelters to survive, questions are emerging about how well the emergency devices work and how often they are used while crews fight wildfires.

“They are for an extreme emergency, never to be considered as an alternative to safe firefighting,” National Interagency Fire Center spokeswoman Carrie Bilbao said Wednesday. “They’re to be used as a last resort if there’s no planned escape out or safety zones become inadequate.”

Still, the shelters have saved more than 300 firefighters since they began being used in the 1960s and became required in firefighting equipment in the late 1970s, Bilbao said.

They look like oversized silver sleeping bags, weigh about 4.5 pounds (2 kilograms) and are made of an aluminum foil-woven silica outer shell designed to withstand direct flames and 2,000 degrees (1,090 Celsius) of heat for about a minute. The shelters don’t stand up well to direct flames or longer periods of heat exposure.

The U.S. Forest Service and other agencies spent years trying to create a better fire shelter, but all the prototypes were rejected last year after officials decided the current shelter provided “the most practical amount of protection given trade-offs of weight, volume (bulk), durability and material toxicity,” the National Wildfire Coordinating Group said.

The firefighters who used the shelters in a national forest near Big Sur along the central California coast suffered burns and smoke inhalation Tuesday, and three were flown to a hospital.

They were all stable, with two in fair condition and one in critical condition, said Chris Barth, spokesman for the Dolan Fire. The group was trying to protect a fire station in rugged mountains in Los Padres National Forest, but Barth...