Prolonged summers that are a recent phenomenon found almost across the globe are a sort of calamity in themselves. But these summers wreak havoc when they trigger off devastating wildfires. Wildfire literally means an unstoppable economic, agricultural and ecological doom spread across an area of thousands of hectares. When the futility of on-ground firefighting attempts against bushfires was realised, few aerial systems were deployed to cope these holocausts. However, the aerial firefighting systems that are in use today have many constraints of their own in terms of capacity, area under cover, use and material wastage.
Evergreen’s Boeing 747 Supertanker promises to be a ‘big daddy’ of all the aerial firefighting systems developed so far! In terms of capacity, Evergreen can carry 24,000 gallons, compared to the present maximum tankspace of 12,000 gallons. Evergreen can perform ‘carpet dumping’ - an ability to release the fluid several times at several places compared to the present limitation of one-time-all drop. Aircrafts today cannot land when fully-loaded for which they need to just throw off the valuable water or chemical if it remains unutilized on the mission. Supertanker doesn’t suffer this handicap; it can take-off and land without any concerns even when fully-loaded.
Apart from above benefits, owing to it’s Boeing 747 platform, the Evergreen Supertanker can offer it’s services anywhere across the globe starting from a single base station, provided with refilling options on it’s way.
Source: Gizmag
