Missoula Technology and Development Center: Shaping Solutions for the Forest Service
Camera Cooler's Job is No Picnic
There's no better way to learn about fire than to see inside. But photographers and cameras can't handle the heat.
An assistant retrieves an insulated camera
box after the experimental fire.
Photographer Jim Kautz figured a way around that problem when he developed a camera box that allows a video camera to survive the heat of a wildland fire. Boxes based on his design have been used in the United States, Canada, and Australia.
Essentially, the camera box is a metal picnic cooler with a special glass window. The window has two layers of glass: an outer layer that can withstand temperatures of up to 2,500 degrees and an inner layer that allows visible light to pass, while reflecting heat.
Specially insulated camera boxes allowed video cameras to record conditions
within this experimental fire in the Northwest Territories.
Ceramic insulation protects the camera from the heat of the fire. An ice pack protects the camera from the heat it generates as it runs.
The cameras have allowed researchers to measure exactly how long it takes the flame front of a fire to pass in different fuel types. Without video footage, that time is difficult to determine.
These photos show the conditions fire shelters could be exposed to
if they were deployed in timber. Shelters just 12 feet outside the timber survived
the experimental fire.
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