After a year of product refinement and fundraising, Blaze Barrier Inc., a Spokane-based maker of wildfire suppression systems, is preparing to start manufacturing at its new West Plains facility.

Founded by engineer Jacob Schuler, Blaze Barrier has relocated to a nearly 10,000-square-foot warehouse at 7517 W. 47th and is finalizing regulatory approvals to begin producing its ground-level fire suppression system. The company has presold over 200 units and anticipates commencing manufacturing within the next few months.

“We’re pretty close to ready to start hammering them out,” Schuler says.

Additionally, the startup has applied for broad-based patents in the U.S. and internationally and has recently reached the final stages with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, says board member Chip Overstreet.

“We applied for protection also in Australia, Europe, and Canada,” Schuler says. “We’ve heard of the ... fires in Australia. Canada burns every year just like America does on the West Coast.”

Blaze Barrier's product, which holds the same name as the company, is a set of portable and biodegradable fire-retardant modules. The product, in its latest iteration, comes in 25-foot lengths, comprised of 37 modules linked together and packed into a box. The modules are meant to be similar in function to a fire line, which is a swath of land cleared of combustible material to slow or stop the progression of a wildfire. Firefighters often create fire lines using hand tools, a slow and laborious process; fast-moving winds sometimes defeat their efforts by whipping embers over the cleared area, as previously reported by the Journal.

The Blaze Barrier is designed in a way that each fire extinguishing module deploys upon contact with a flame. A suppressing powder erupts five feet in the direction of the fire and five feet in the opposite direction of the flames when it makes contact. The result is a 10-foot area of smothered flames blanketed in an extinguishing agent, that also doubles as a soil fertilizer.

As the company waits for approval to start manufacturing, it has a few part-time workers on standby until it receives the green light to hire entry-level production roles, Schuler says. In January, Jennifer Fanto, an adviser and consultant to Blaze Barrier for the past two years, will join the company as its chief operating officer. 

Additionally, the company is currently fundraising $1 million to be primarily used to scale production, Schuler says. 

The last time the Journal caught up with Schuler, Blaze Barrier closed a preseed fundraising round that generated $300,000 with Avista Development, a subsidiary of Spokane-based Avista Corp., as the lead investor.

With the raised capital, Blaze Barrier has worked to upgrade its product design using more efficient materials, a safer composition with a nonexplosive charge, and a more effective and reliable deployment method, Schuler says.

The company has also shifted its packaging options from boxes with 50-foot-long products to a lighter box that holds 25-foot products to make it easier to carry, he adds. The longer product length is now planned to accommodate institutional use by fire crews and utility companies, he says.

Blaze Barrier also is working to expand its customer base by seeking government agencies to work with, such as the Washington state Department of Natural Resources, utilities, and railroads, Schuler says. 

The startup’s long-term vision includes partnering with insurance companies in an effort to reduce premiums, noting that there are 3 million homeowners currently uninsurable due to wildfire risk.

“Most utilities in the West have identified wildfires as their No. 1 risk,” Schuler says.

Earlier this year, Schuler and Overstreet attended the Red Sky Summit, a wildfire technology event in San Francisco, where another vulnerable group was identified in the market: ranchers.

“We met a lot of people who asked about ranchers, especially down in Texas,” Schuler says. “We think about the farms up here and how dry it can get up here. We have a lot of farming communities, and we’d really like to invest in something like this to protect their land.”

Overstreet says he’s been an investor in Blaze Barrier from the start. For him, Blaze Barrier stands out not because it is flashy, but because it addresses a real and growing problem with a straightforward solution. As an investor, he says opportunities that offer meaningful, large-scale impact are rare, particularly in the technology landscape, that is more focused on incremental improvements.

Wildfire suppression, he says, is an area in which simple tools can make a significant difference. Rather than relying on complex systems or future breakthroughs, Blaze Barrier’s approach builds on established firefighting principles and adapts them for faster deployment in the field.

With fire seasons intensifying in the West and beyond, Overstreet says Blaze Barrier’s product is something that can be widely adopted by firefighters, landowners, and utilities alike.