VENTURA, CA- Consumer Fire Products, Inc. announced another successful deployment of its products in the Santa Barbara area. For a second time, its FOAMSAFE Mobile Systems were deployed to protect structures in Montecito from raging wildfire. FOAMSAFE Mobile Systems cover structures in foam to stop them from catching fire.

FOAMSAFE Crews are privately hired and staged at a specific property for the duration of their hire; they focus on each client that retains them. Working around the clock and equipped with FOAMSAFE Mobile Systems, these crews are ready to extinguish any embers or spot fires that can easily start on site and can cause the destruction of the client’s home.

“Homeowners can be in control of their property once they leave, via direct communication with our dispatch team”, says Irene Rhodes, CEO. “We operate in 24 hour cycles and vigilantly care for the property, while updating the client on the wildfire threat. We are armed with high-tech CAFS (compressed air foam systems) which can extinguish and pre-treat structures and vegetation with no adverse effects from the foam product we use,” adds Rhodes.

Because they are not mandated by an agency, but hired directly by homeowners to help protect their homes from damage by wildfire, they are not directly in the path of the firefighters trying to control and extinguish the wildfires and protect a large number of homes that are threatened.

Consumer Fire Products, Inc has also introduced stationary systems, the FOAMSAFE FireMaster System, to give clients piece of mind during any wildfire event without bringing in an extra crew. These units are installed on a property and are programmed to automatically activate and blanket the structures and vegetation with SilvexÔ Class A Foam whether someone is present or not. Once the unique fire detectors detect a fire, the patent pending system does the rest. It not only sprays the foam in one sequence, but repeats the foaming as needed to continue to help protect the property for as long as necessary. The green system needs no external power, and can be monitored or controlled via the Internet.

“When you buy or build a house you get insurance, factor in the costs of maintenance and repair, taxes, landscaping etc…. After living through my first wildfire, the Tea Fire of 2008, now I would never consider home ownership without a FOAMSAFE system from Consumer Fire Products. To me it is unthinkable not to protect my most important investment to the fullest extent possible, said Sarah from Montecito, whose parent’s home was protected by the system in both the Jesusita and TEA fires.

Various insurance brokers have approved the FOAMSAFE FireMaster Series System, and Consumer Fire Products, Inc. is currently working with Chubb Insurance to become a Preferred Provider of Exterior Fire Protection Systems. They have been informed by the insurance providers that a property with this system installed can receive up to 25% off of the cost of fire insurance premiums, made by Consumer Fire Products, Inc.

Consumer Fire Products is reaching out to Santa Barbara residents in the wake of the recent Jesusita fire to educate them on proper home protection, helping families prepare their homes in case of future events.

ABOUT CONSUMER FIRE PRODUCTS, INC.
Consumer Fire Products, Inc. provides fire protection systems and services to homeowners in the Wildland/Urban Interface (WUI) Zones and fire agencies worldwide. Its patent pending fixed and mobile systems will automatically help to protect structures, vegetation, and other contents of properties from burning during wildfire events. The company has a branch in Ventura, CA and was founded in 1998 by Ralph and Irene Rhodes, former firefighters. More information can be found on their website at www.consumerfireproducts.com, or by calling 1-866-901-CFPI (2374).

The FOAMSAFE FireMaster Series is a fully automated, self-contained, exterior fire protection system that affords property owners the opportunity to help protect their most valuable assets from the threat of wildfires, whether they are at home or not. Sensing an approaching fire, the system quickly activates, spraying fire retardant foam over structures and surrounding property.

The FOAMSAFE Mobile System optimizes the potential for firefighters to go in, set up, and get out within minutes, often using just one system to safeguard multiple homes. Systems can be controlled and monitored from any distance, limiting the risk to homes as well as firefighters. Thanks to the utilization of CAFS technology, foam is emitted to spray structures as well as the surrounding vegetation. In addition, the FOAMSAFE Mobile System travels with the team to most locations easily and efficiently.

The FOAMSAFE FireMaster Series:

1. Scans the horizon around the clock, automatically detecting fires occurring up to a half-mile away.
2. Disperses safe, fire retardant foam on structures and surrounding property.
3. Utilizes its own water and power sources.
4. Calls up to four pre-programmed phone numbers immediately upon activation.
5. Activates remotely from anywhere internet access is available. In-house system monitoring and notification packages are also available.
6. Requires no clean-up, thanks to the foam’s EPA-rated safe, biodegradable composition.

The FOAMSAFE Mobile System:

1. Deploys quickly, providing fast response to areas threatened by fire.
2. Utilizes its own water and power sources.
3. Lessens firefighter risk by allowing fire teams the ability to monitor and operate units from the fire command center.
4. Releases foam automatically, covering surrounding properties and structures before fire advances into the threatened areas.
5. Allows for speedy access to hard-to-reach areas through the use of a compact trailered system.
6. Includes all necessary equipment for setup, including ladders and fire gear.

CFPI was founded in 1998 by firefighters with over 30 years of wildland fire experience. A working partnership with Siemens Energy and Automation ensures that CFPI is a front-runner in highly advanced, reliable fire technology solutions. Tyco Inc. also recommends the system to homeowners. CFPI is proud to be recognized by both USC (University of Southern California) and CCC (Chemetka City College) for their cutting edge advancements in fire technology.

Ms. Rhodes was fighting fires in rural Oregon in the 1980’s when she became intrigued by the business possibilities of the fire-retarding foam that she sprayed from her firetruck. The years passed. She married, had two daughters, founded a successful commercial landscaping and irrigation company and graduated with highest honors from a community college in Eugene. She and her husband, Ralph, also a firefighter, continued to debate the idea of business tied to fire-retardant foam.

“Finally, I said if we were serious, I needed some book smarts. I already had streets smarts,” comments Ms.Rhodes. Leaving her husband in charge of their landscaping company, she and her two young daughters moved to Los Angeles,where she enrolled as a junior in USC Marshall School of Business in the fall of 2004.

Ms. Rhodes says her company’s product is a realistic solution to a shortage of trained firefighters. “The problem is that people are moving to rural areas and businesses have followed. But putting out fires in homes and commercial buildings is much more complex than fighting a wildfire, and the reality is, firefighters won’t
be there,”Ms.Rhodes comments. Some 39 teams submitted plans to preliminary reviewers including Bill Zimmerman, Andy Thornburg and Steve Reich, members of the Pasadena Angels, a group of more than 80 entrepreneurial investors., Richard Koffler, president of Los Angeles Venture Associates (LAVA) and a member of Tech Coast Angels, the largest angel investors network in the U.S., and Jim Sowers, an entrepreneur and a member of the Greif Center Advisory Council.

The runner-up was a team of four USC Marshall graduate students including, Ryan Armstrong, James Frinier,
Fernando Rivas and Along Schwartz. They joined with USC Marshall alumnus Tim Mournian, whose company, EnviroMill, uses a patented extrusion technology to reduce tires to a valuable product, called ultra-fine crumb, at a third of the cost of virgin rubber.

The Greif Center has sponsored business plan competitions for years, but this was the first contest with a large cash prize. “We decided to put our money where our mouth was,” said Kathleen Allen, a professor at the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and director of the Center for Technology Commercialization, both of which sponsored the competition. Additional funds were contributed by six graduates of the entrepreneurship program: Torin Pavia, Joe Kaplan, Steve Robbins, Scott Adelson, Marshall Lerner and Blair Salisbury.

Judges eliminated teams over the next four months until only five remained. These finalists were judged by
Lloyd Greif, a boutique investment banker, John Dilts, president of Kieretsu Forum, Richard Morganstern, a member of Tech Coast Angels, Jonathan Goody of Bay Equity Real Estate Acquisitions and Andrea Belz, Dr. Kevin Scanlon and Davis Thompson, three members of the Pasadena Angels. ]

Other business schools sponsor competitions, but USC Marshall’s is the only one that requires the winner to
begin operations within six months of winning, which is why Ms. Rhodes has already started marketing FOAMSAFE. She’s talking to fire prevention officials from the Los Padres National Forest who have expressed interest and a fire safety organization may highlight news of FOAMSAFE in its 55,000-circulation newsletter. Ms. Rhodes had planned to meet with a Forest Service in chief of the Trinity National Forest.

“She wants one of our units for her new log home. “It might be my first sale,” says Ms.Rhodes.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – A blaze that killed five federal firefighters last year has challenged attitudes about saving homes on the fringe of wilderness. The five perished last fall while protecting an empty mountain vacation home from the Esperanza fire, which authorities say was started by a 36-year-old auto mechanic now charged with murder.

However, the deaths also were blamed on social and political pressures and decisions to put homes before the safety of firefighters, according to a report.

As another fire season heats up, some U.S. Forest Service officials say a shift in strategy is inevitable as firefighters increasingly risk their lives defending more and more communities built in prime fire territory. “We are not going to die for property,” said Tom Harbour, national director of fire and aviation management for the Forest Service. “It’s time for homeowners to take responsibility for the protection of their homes.”

Chief Forester Gail Kimbell would not say whether the service is considering a change in policy on defending homes in certain fire conditions, but the agency plans to address flaws in the response to the deadly fire in remote Twin Pines and is conducting a longer-term review of overall firefighter safety.

Firefighters’ attitudes also are an issue in protecting homes. Public expectations can sometimes lead to bravado and a cavalier mindset among firefighters, experts say. A recent investigative report in the five deaths listed overconfidence, excessive motivation and risk-taking as contributing factors.

“One of the standard fire orders states: `Fight the fire aggressively having provided for safety first,’ ” said Peter Leschak, a 26-year firefighter and a commander for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry. “There has been an argument recently to change that because we don’t need to encourage firefighters to be more aggressive – half the time we’re holding them back.”

Federal firefighters could scale back structural protection without too much political fallout, but that would not be easy for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which answers to the governor, said John Maclean, a federally certified firefighter and the author of several books on wildfire disasters.

The state agency spends 44 percent of its budget on wildfire suppression annually, he said, and much of that work means protecting homes where suburbs collide with wilderness.

More than 6 million homes in California stand in wildfire “red zones,” and that number is expected to grow by 20 percent in the next decade. “There is an expectation on the part of a lot of people that somebody better get in there and do or die for their house,” Maclean said. “If you stop doing that and you stop taking reasonable risk to protect structures, you’d have a new governor in about five minutes.”

“It’s driven by a couple of things: The number of large fires we have, and also the fires are occurring in several states and in several geographic areas,” said Randy Eardley, a spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center. “The resources we have are being stretched thin.”

The change allows fire managers to request help from international crews, and National Guard units could be mobilized. On Thursday, fire center spokesman Ken Frederick said new crews were arriving in the Pacific Northwest from Alaska and the Southeast.

Choppers Needed

Firefighters in the area critically need medium-sized helicopters, he said. With 23 uncontained large fires or fire complexes in Nevada, Utah and Idaho, there aren’t enough contractor-supplied helicopters to go around, he said.

About 15,000 U.S. firefighters were already battling nearly 70 fires bigger than 100 acres in 12 states. The level was raised as dry lightning blasted and sparked dozens of new blazes in the West, including more than 1,000 new fires since Monday, Eardley said. Thursday morning brought slightly lower temperatures in the Northwest, Frederick said, but the break wasn’t expected to last long. Dry, windy weather, temperatures over 100 and
thunderstorms were forecast for the next seven days, he said.

A new wildfire that started Wednesday evening on the Idaho National Laboratory grounds quickly swept across nearly 15 square miles or 9,500 acres of sagebrush and grassland at the 890-square-mile nuclear research area in the southeast Idaho desert. Its cause was not known, said John Epperson, an INL spokesman.

No INL facilities were in immediate danger, but the lab’s 700 employees in the building nearest the fire were told to stay home Thursday. Other facilities at the lab, which employs about 3,600 workers, remained open. Fire crews set a backburn to keep the fire from jumping the highway and “that appears to be working,” INL spokesman Ethan Huffman said late Wednesday night. The blaze was about 10 percent contained.

The nearest INL facility is the Materials and Fuels Complex, roughly five miles northeast of the edge of the fire and on the other side of the highway. Huffman described the complex as an area of research in nuclear reactor fuel development. He said the metal-roofed complex was surrounded by vast sand buffers and the wildfire posed no
danger to it, but operations were suspended Thursday and the workers told to stay home.

WASHINGTON — It was a monster fire — 175,000 acres of tinder-dry timber just south of the Canadian border in north-central Washington state. In places it burned with an intensity rarely seen, crowning through stands of Douglas fir and ponderosa and lodgepole pine that had been weakened by a bark beetle infestation.

“It was clearly a firestorm,” said David Peterson, a research biologist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Lab in Seattle. At its height, 2,300 firefighters battled the blaze, including crews from New Zealand, Mexico and soldiers dispatched from Fort Lewis near Tacoma, Wash. Last year’s Tripod fire, the largest in Washington state in more than a century, smoldered through the winter, and several small spot fires have kicked up this summer.

Peterson and others scientists say the Tripod fire could be a sign of things to come in the Western forests. Rising temperatures brought on by global warming put added stress on trees, making them more susceptible to bugs and disease, and stimulating the growth of underbrush and other fuels to feed the blazes. Some studies suggest that the number of acres scorched by wildfire could increase fivefold by the end of the century.

Even as wildfires burn across the West this summer, the nation’s forests have become entwined in the larger debate over climate change. They are both a victim of global warming and a potential solution in helping reverse the trend, by sopping up huge amounts of greenhouse gases. Among all the talk of carbon sequestration, biofuels and corporate average fuel economy, forests have been mostly overlooked on Capitol Hill.

By some estimates, the forests could absorb 500 million tons of carbon dioxide a year — about a third of the carbon dioxide the United States produces annually. Like all plants, trees soak up carbon dioxide as part of the process of photosynthesis, using the carbon to produce leaves and wood and releasing oxygen. Additional carbon is stored in the forest floor. “If you are looking at greenhouse gases, forests are a great thing to focus on,” Forest Service Chief Gail Kimbell said in an interview.

Yet with most things involving federal lands, controversy is brewing. Bureaucrats, scientists, timber industry officials and environmentalists are already sniping over how best to manage the forests in an era of global warming. Based on nearly a century of detailed recordkeeping on many of the national forests, Kimbell said there’s no question that temperatures are rising, the forests are drying out, underbrush is becoming thicker, and bug and disease infestations are mounting. Since 1986, the number of major forest fires has quadrupled, and the number of acres burned has grown sixfold. Nearly 50 percent of the Forest Service’s budget is spent on fighting fires.
“Fire managers say they are seeing behavior they have never seen before,” said Kimbell, who began her career as a forest ranger in Oregon and Washington.

In the Pacific Northwest, the greatest threat is east of the Cascade Mountains. West of the Cascades, scientists are less sure of the effects of global warming. While the Douglas fir forests of western Washington and Oregon are susceptible to drought, they also thrive on carbon dioxide. “We know things are changing, but we don’t know all the answers on the west side,” said Don McKenzie, a research ecologist at the Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Lab.

Kimbell said there will always be forest fires, but the best way to help contain them is by clearing out the underbrush that has accumulated and thinning the stands. About 13 million of the Forest Service’s 193 million acres have been cleared and thinned out. Kimbell said healthy forests with young trees absorb more carbon than older forests. The old-growth trees are better at storing carbon.

“We can sequester more carbon with active management rather than a hands-off approach,” she said. Later this year, the Forest Service is expected to unveil a global warming-related forest management plan. It could involve planting additional acres, thinning existing stands and burning the leftover debris, or slash, to produce electricity. In Montana, some school districts are using forest debris to fuel their boilers. Kimbell said the new boilers run cleaner on the scrap wood than oil- or gas-fired boilers.

HELENA, Mont. — Hot, dry and windy weather helped a wildfire near Glacier National Park in Montana grow to roughly 5,000 acres (2,023 hectares) and continue to threaten an evacuated lodge.

The blaze had grown from 1,000 acres (404.7 hectares) a day earlier and was just 2 percent contained, fire information officer Dale Warriner said Sunday. The fire was running into heavy timber.

Elsewhere, a nearly month-old California wildfire that had stood still for several days flared up over the weekend, burning 1,500 new acres (607 new hectares) in Santa Barbara County and prompting an evacuation order for a dozen homes, authorities said.

Another 200 homes were told to prepare to flee at short notice, Los Padres spokeswoman Kathy Good said.
Warm and extremely dry conditions allowed the fire to burn through old, heavy trees in the Los Padres National Forest on its uncontained southeast side.

The fire had consumed some 33,500 acres (13,557 hectares), or 52 square miles (135 square kilometers), since it started July 4 and was 70 percent contained Sunday afternoon. The fire’s renewed activity in the inaccessible, heavily vegetated wilderness area compelled authorities to push back their anticipated containment date from Aug. 3 to Sept. 7, Good said. The 500-member crew of firefighters was expected to at least double in size, she said. Fifteen helicopters and eight air tankers were being used against the fire, which had cost at least US$37.1 million (?27.18 million).

Farther south, meanwhile, crews were battling a wildfire that had burned 200 acres (81 hectares) of brush in Menifee, an unincorporated area of Riverside County about 80 miles (130 kilometers) southeast of downtown Los Angeles, fire Capt. Jennifer Ricci said. More than 200 firefighters were working against the blaze, reported Sunday afternoon, Ricci said. The fire was 40 percent contained, she said. A voluntary evacuation request for homes scattered within a nearby canyon area was lifted by Sunday evening, Ricci said.