In response to Sammi's e-mail to Jim Roth:

Subject: fire shelter update

In response to your e-mail request, I wanted to give you the latest status on our Storm King Mountain fire shelter tents for wildland burnover protection.

At the present time we have two different fire shelter designs that are undergoing performance tests by the USDA Forest Service. They are formulating and using the performance based test standards that all fire shelters will have to undergo for evaluation in the future. The Forest Service is not only testing our Storm King Mountain fire shelters, but other materials from private companies which have been sewn together in a USDA Forest Service design and shape.

Their intentions are to complete all of the testing in the next 30 days and have a complete evaluation summary finished soon after for review by a National Review Committee from the Federal fire agencies. Some of the criteria to be evaluated is the fire shelter performance in radiant and convective heat environments, wearability, size, weight, bulk and cost. The Review Committee will select the improved fire shelter design which will be adopted by all Federal agencies for the 2003 fire season. The Government Services Agency (GSA) should go out around May 2002, with Requests for Bids to various companies to fabricate and deliver this improved fire shelter which will be manufactured to new Forest Service drawings.

I have been told that whether or not our Storm King Mountain fire shelter is selected, we will be on the "Bidders List" to compete for the GSA production contract to build these new, improved fire shelters. Even by the end of February we should have a rough idea of how much fire departments should budget for the new shelters, and what the final size and weight of the shelters must be.

Over the years we have encouraged and prodded fire fighting agencies to adopt our fire shelter design. It has been evaluated by CAL-OSHA and CDF recently, but we were never able to get any agencies to place our fire shelters into service for test or evaluation. It appears that our efforts were not in vain... 

Fire fighters are now very close to getting a better fire shelter tent. This is what we have wanted during our eight year effort in pushing fire shelter development. I congratulate the people at the Missoula Technology and Development Center for moving so quickly during the past two years!

So, stay tuned. We are not offering our fire shelter to the fire community until we understand these performance test results and what decision the Federal agencies will make on the final shelter design.

Thank you for your continued interest in our products and services. Please note that we have recently relocated our office to the following address:

Storm King Mountain Technologies
4725 Calle Alto
Camarillo, CA 93012

Phone: 805-484-7267
Fax: 805-484-8167
Cell: 213-713-4099
E-mail: jim.roth@stormkingmtn.com

Sincerely, Jim Roth

Storm King Mountain Technologies