Team Wildfire Wildfires with Jet Engines is Combating

A Movie Special Effects Engineer's Revolutionary Concept Will Help Combat the Wildfire Epidemic.

- Aron Vaughan and Patricia Miller

Wildfires are fast becoming one of the world's most detrimental ecological disasters. Climate change and the resulting lack of moisture in forested areas are contributing to the crises seen on the West Coast of the U.S., the heartland of Australia, and many other areas of the plantet.

Movie special-effects coordinator Steve Wolf created Team Wildfire to tackle the challenge of putting out wildfires. After spending most of his life figuring out new and creative ways to blow things up, Wolf is turning his pyro-manipulation talents in innovative directions to combat this enormous threat.

"My dad got me a chemistry kit when I was eight," said Wolf. "The whole purpose of chemistry, I thought at the time, was to blow stuff up. I combined that thrill with some advice my dad had given me, when he said, 'Find what you like to do, then figure out how to make a living at it' and used that passion to make a fascinating career in stunts and special effects." Wolf founded Team Wildfire, formerly known as PyroNemesis, in 2020, after years of working with the idea of manipulating fire with man made weather.

"I had worked with director Sydney Pollack on the Tom Cruise movie The Firm," said Wolf. "In one scene there was a small leaf fire. And at the end of the shot, Sydney joked, 'Steve, the fire looked great. You don't have to put it out, but it can't stay here," because they needed to put the camera where the fire had been.

"And that's really what gave me the idea of moving fire fuels. Not just putting them out, but physically pushing them away, especially if adverse winds are blowing fire towards you. You need to blow it back, harder." That inspiration led to a decade-long endeavor of creating a functioning machine capable of providing intense counter winds, stripping away fuel, generating massive evaporative cooling, and depleting the oxygen that feeds wildfires.