Albertan creates ‘RainStream’ to help protect communities from wildfires

A new Alberta-made innovation is hoping to help protect communities from wildfires.

The RainStream by Wildfire Innovations is a large mobile sprinkler that takes just 20 minutes. An up to 100-foot tower can then pump 4,000 litres of water a minute into the surrounding area.

“When you have a whole bunch of these together, it can create 10 millimetres of rainfall in under two hours, over a huge area,” explained Rolf Wenzel, the CEO of Wildfire Innovations.

The intent is to coat a forest or building with moisture, reducing the risk of a wildfire ember lighting spreading the blaze.

“Just trying to help save a life, so that people have a home to come home to,” said Don Hallet, the founder of Wildfire Innovations.

Hallet has lived through two wildfire evacuations in his lifetime, saying he knows what it is like to evacuate your community not knowing what you will return to.

He created the RainStream while watching Alberta’s wildfire situation intensify in recent years, and most recently seeing the difficult situation for firefighters in Jasper.

“The areal teams are doing the best they can to fight fires, and then with the ground system. So I thought there needed to be something in between that would reach a lot farther to protect a larger area,” he explained.

The new technology is patent pending and yet to be deployed in a wildfire situation. But Thursday, firefighters watched the first public demonstration at Enoch Cree Nation.

“To see it, to see it created a rainbow, to see how it completely doused the area we are looking at, it works,“ said Shane Peacock, Enoch Council Member.

First Nations manage their own fire management on reserves, with financial support from the federal government.

Peacock says it’s appealing to see a quick way to get moisture into a forest, or on the roofs of buildings, saving time of needing to deploy sprinklers throughout the community in the event of a wildfire.

“We live in a different climate, different world right now. Alberta, we’ve seen it, we have a history. More importantly, we need to take better care of our lands,” Peacock.

Enoch Cree Nation is still determining if they will partner with Rain Shield. The Calgary-based company will be holding more demonstrations for communities in Alberta and B.C. this fall.