You always see wildlife firefighters with drip torches. I understand they are used to control/suppress fires, but how does that work? Why does it work as a fire suppressant?
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Wildfires will typically burn with the wind blowing them along. This is called “head” fire. So to put one out, you get ahead of that location and light your own fire line using a drip torch. That line will spread and burn moving perpendicular (ideally) to the fire line. Firefighters will immediately put out the part burning with the wind (otherwise it will turn into another head fire). That can be done simply by shoveling dirt on that part of the line, raking all fuel away from it (ahead of time) or letting it run into a plow line of fresh dirt.
The other part of the fire line will burn against the wind direction. This is called “backing” fire, and it moves pretty slowly. Ideally, by the time the wildfire line meets the backing fire, there is a large section of already burned land, so the wildfire has nothing left to consume and will go out.
You can do all of this with matches or a lighter, but a drip torch makes it easy to set a nearly continuous line of fire instead of having to use lots of matches, etc. The fuel used inside is a mix of gasoline and diesel. Diesel won’t burn on its own, but pure gasoline is explosive. Mixing the two together allows the drip torch to put down drops that burn for a few minutes on the ground so that the surrounding fuel will start burning.
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