Giving Compass' Take:

• Scientists have found that most fires start on the side of highways or near power lines and they will begin testing out a new gel on the surrounding vegetation that is impervious to fire. 

• What efforts are currently in place to advance preventative strategies? How can donors invest in new science?

• What can we do about wildfires? Click here to find out. 

It’s the middle of the fire season in California, and this week, firefighters will begin testing a new way to prevent wildfires from starting—a fire-retardant gel that can be spread on high-risk areas next to freeways.

In the study on the gel, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers looked at where fires actually start. They found that in California, 84% of the 305,000 fires in the past decade started at roadsides, where a cigarette butt tossed out a car window or an overheated car pulling to the side of the road can easily ignite dry grass. “The fires reproducibly happened in the exact same areas year after year,” says Eric Appel, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of materials science and engineering. “There are stretches of roadway in California where, in a single four-mile stretch of road, there’s 35 to 40 fires each year.” Other hotspots include campgrounds and areas under power lines (the fire that destroyed the town of Paradise, California, a year ago, killing 85 people, was caused by electrical transmission lines sparking dry, hot vegetation.) While wildfires are natural in California, most “wildfires” are now caused by humans.

If these critical areas could be treated to prevent fires from starting, it could also prevent more widespread destruction. But until this point, it hasn’t been possible to use fire retardants preventatively. “If you were able to prophylactically treat these areas, you would only have to treat a small amount of land to prevent an enormous proportion of the fires that are occurring year after year in California,” says Appel. “But then the issue is there’s no technology that can allow you to do that.” Right now, fire retardants are dropped from airplanes as wildfires are already raging, used to help protect homes as fire crews fight back the blaze. But the chemicals only stay on vegetation temporarily; wind can blow the retardant off the vegetation, and even a heavy dew can wash it away.

Read the full article on the gel that can prevent plants from burning to stop wildfires by Adele Peters at Fast Company.