Retrofitting will begin this week to strengthen the floor of 68,000 fire shelters recalled from fire crews and warehouses nationwide, said Leslie Anderson, fire shelter project leader at the Forest Service's Missoula Technology and Development Center.
In the meantime, wildland firefighters will use the old model fire shelters.
Firefighters only use the tentlike shelters as a last resort - if they are overrun by a fire.
None of the new models were used in emergency situations during the 2003 wildfire season, Anderson said. In fact, no one found fault with the shelters until firefighter training began this spring.
Anderson said she received an e-mail on March 18 from the superintendent of a hotshot firefighting crew in California, who had used one of the shelters during a training class.
When firefighters shook open the shelter, the floor tore next to the handle. And the superintendent had heard of another instance where the same thing happened in another training session.
"I opened that e-mail and knew this was something we had to deal with right now," Anderson said Tuesday. "We stopped distribution and started trying to figure out what was happening."
After years of design and testing, the trouble was not only unexpected but frustrating, she said.
"During development, we would take shelters, shake them, fold them up, shake them again, fold them again, shake them again, and we never saw this problem," Anderson said. "We just couldn't imagine what on earth could have caused these tears."
Quickly, though, Anderson said her team realized they needed to focus on fixing the problem, rather than explaining it.
"At some point early on, we all said, 'Let's just fix it,' " she said. "We are glad we found out now."
All of the tears were in the floor material. All were near the handles added to the fire shelter as part of the redesign.
When firefighters grabbed the handles to shake open the shelter, the floor ripped.
Anderson emphasized, though, that the problem was not common - "not by any means."
"Honestly, we feel the risk was very, very small," she said, "but fire management leadership and the Washington office wanted people to have confidence in the shelter - to know they were getting a good, safe product."
Private contractors will retrofit the defective shelters by adding fiberglass webbing to the floor of the shelter.
About 11,000 of the shelters were already in the field and have been returned; the remaining shelters were still in government fire caches, Anderson said.
Up to 5,000 shelters will be repaired each week, beginning this week.
At the same time, new shelters will be manufactured using a design that strengthens the area around the handles.
Handles were added to make fire shelters quicker to open.
Shelters are folded and carried on a firefighter's belt or in their backpack. When opened, they look like a tiny aluminum tent.
More than 300 firefighters have been saved over the past 30 years by climbing into the protective shelters during burn-overs.
Anderson said the Forest Service had planned to replace all its old model shelters over a five-year period, so few of the new models were even in use.
Because the problem was spotted early on, it isn't likely to affect the replacement schedule.
Emergency fire shelters cost about $250 each, Anderson said. The retrofit will cost about $14 per shelter.
Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268 or at sdevlin@missoulian.com
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