Wildfire Cannon: The Iron-Dome-Inspired System That Stops Fires Before the Trucks Roll | FireDome

 Wildfire defense just changed. FireDome co-founder Gadi Benjamini built an autonomous cannon — inspired by Israel's Iron Dome — that detects advancing flames, launches smart capsules, and coats your home against ember strikes before a single fire truck is dispatched. One unit. 70 acres. Fully automatic, 24/7. After LA, Maui, and Boulder, this is the system every homeowner in a fire zone should know about. 

_______________________________________________

Your life is better because of Israelis you've never met. 

⭐ Loved this? A 5-star review takes 5 seconds and is how new listeners find us. 

🎧 All episodes + every platform: pod.link/1585604285

📺 YouTube: @israelitrailblazers | 📧 Substack: findinginspiration.substack.com 

Transcript

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 0:00

Fire dome is an autonomous launcher that launches smart capsules to create a fire break. We have wind sensors that adjust the ballistic trajectory of every capsule that we launch with the wind. The main principles that we implemented is to be off-grid. There are intentional shutoffs of the power grid to prevent more ignitions during a wildfire event.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 0:25

We're fighting fires the same way we did 50 years ago. Imagine flames racing towards your home. You have minutes, maybe you have seconds. But now imagine a cannon that sees the fire coming before you do and stops it cold even before a fire truck arrives. That's not science fiction. That is a new technology called Fire Dome, built in Israel, designed to save your life wherever you live. This is the Israeli Trailblazer Show, where we bring you Israelis who are quietly helping your world wherever you live. I'm your host, Jennifer Weisman. Now let's meet the man who built Fire Dome. Welcome, Gotti Benjamini. How are you?

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 1:11

Excellent, Jennifer. It's so happy and I'm excited to talk with you.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 1:15

How were you inspired to create Fire Dome? Where did that come from?

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 1:19

2023 was a really bad wildfire year. In Lahaina fires in August and the Greece fires in Canada had its worst year ever. And here in Israel, we had the beginning of the war, the first months. And the Irondome, the system that protects our sky 24-7 from missiles, was very much active. And it kind of clicked. We understood that we can take inspiration from how Iron Dome acts, how it protects communities and critical assets and properties, and take these principles and implement them for wildfire resilience. So that's how Fire Dome was born. Fire Dome consists of a detection module that detects fires when they're small, away from the property, coming towards the property, and then creates multiple protection and also intercepts fire and suppresses fire, same as Iron Dome intercepts the missiles that are coming towards Israel.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 2:08

Fire Dome is an autonomous cannon that shoots flame retardant projectiles from the ground to cover and stop fires from advancing. Is that how we describe it?

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 2:20

Precisely. What we do is we create multiple layers of protection. Two layers of protection are preventive, preemptive. So the fire is identified by our system from afar. We launch these projectiles, or we call them smart capsules, to create a fire break, a ground firebreak or fire retardant, eco-friendly retardant, obviously, all around your property. And it could be up to 70 acres of property per one cannon or launcher that we install. The second thing that we do is also preemptive with the same capsules and the same retardant. We cover the structures, the main structures within the property to prevent embers that can fly miles away from the firefront towards your property with the wind and start new fires on the houses, on the structures. The coating with the retardant prevents that from happening. So it keeps your main assets intact. And the third layer is kind of unique because it's more real time, it's live. We have detection sensors on site that detect fires that do start inside your property. Let's say an ember landed on a piece of vegetation can start a new fire. We detect this fire and we suppress with a capsule with water because it's a small fire. We catch it when it's very small and prevent it from expanding. So the combination of these three layers create the protection and resilience for the property.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 3:32

One cannon protects 70 acres. Is that right?

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 3:36

Indeed, yes.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 3:37

So a homeowners association in a dense community, right? They could have one cannon, and that one cannon could create a firebreak and protect all the homes.

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 3:49

Precisely.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 3:50

That's pretty amazing.

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 3:51

Or a vineyard or a utility facility or a logistics warehouse. I heard a story a few days ago about a factory that produces Coca-Cola cans from aluminum cans. It turns out that a few years ago, the factory that produces Coca-Cola cans was burnt. And the damage here is double. One, because the factory itself had to be rebuilt and all the machinery and everything. That's a huge financial toll. But the other thing is that they couldn't manufacture these cans for months until they rebuild the structures. So this could also be a potential candidate for such a system, protecting critical infrastructures and logistics.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 4:28

Absolutely. And I mean, when you think about the last year, we had Boulder, Colorado fire, which wiped out communities. Of course, we had LA.

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 4:36

Yeah.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 4:36

Unbelievable. $140 some odd billion dollars in damage, lives lost. These homes aren't even rebuilt. Hawaii, you mentioned Oklahoma this week, there was a fire.

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 4:46

Just now, as we stick, yeah, still not contained.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 4:49

Fire Dome, the essence of it is to protect the assets quickly so that the fire department then can come and put out the fire. Is that right?

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 4:59

Exactly. To put out the wildfire that's raging in the wildland. The thing is that the first minutes from ignition of the fire until it spreads out, they are the golden minutes, the most critical time frames that the firefighters need to be there fast enough. Sometimes it's a challenge because we're there already. We can create these protections and gain those precious minutes for the fire departments. And we work hand in hand with them. We're partners with them, and it's amazing to work with the chiefs. They're the most dedicated ones to protect the communities, and we want to help them and integrate with them.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 5:31

So a community would get a membership, get a cannon, and it would just be sitting there dormant. You said you have sensors. What kind of sensors do you have, Gaudi?

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 5:40

So we have multiple types of sensors, different types of cameras that can detect fires 24-7, even if it's nighttime. We have wind sensors that help us adjust the ballistic trajectory of every capsule that we launch with the wind, because as you know, most of the destruction caused by wildfires in the past 20 years in California was caused by high wind-driven fires, over 30 miles per hour winds. And therefore, it's critical to be able to launch accurately, even with these strong winds above 30 miles per hour. And these wind sensors that we install enable us to do so. We have temperature sensors, we have humidity sensors, and all this array of sensors helps us understand the microclimate inside the properties.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 6:18

How do you power the CAD?

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 6:20

So one of the main principles that we implemented is to be off-grid completely. Power water communications. We bring in generators to help us power the system, even if the grid fails. And often there are intentional shutoffs of the power grid to prevent more ignitions during a wildfire event. Second thing is the water. We don't want to tap into the local municipality water because the water belongs to the firefighters during an event. We don't want to take their water. So we bring in our own water reservoir tank to flow the water into the system, into the capsules. And third communications, same with the power grid. We want to be totally disconnected and self-sufficient. That's critical.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 6:56

This is a very unique technology. Would there be a scenario where this cannon doesn't work?

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 7:01

So the cannon will always work because we do maintenance, both physical maintenance once a year to make sure that all the systems are calibrated. And also we have the ability to do remote check-ins to look into the core components of the system, make sure that they're prepped in case there's a wildfire. There are wildfire scenarios, extreme wildfire scenarios. For example, if the entire property is surrounded by very high flames, then the system won't be 100% effective. No system, no solutions, no technologies can handle these fires.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 7:33

Right.

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 7:34

It will for sure mitigate the damages, but we can't guarantee 100%.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 7:38

That's a big outlier. In America, I have noticed that insurance companies are with force exiting markets like Colorado, California, many markets. How does having this innovative Canon technology change the conversation for homeowners? Do you think insurance companies would find this technology maybe very interesting? Maybe they'd want to re-enter some of these markets if you could protect the assets as your technology will.

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 8:06

I think the fact that we can introduce technologies and tools to the homeowners, to the business owners that actually reduce the risk dramatically for wildfire to create damages for the property, for their assets, for sure insurance companies will either recreate insurability for the property or reduce the premiums, which are increasing by hundreds of percent over the last few years. We're speaking with multiple carriers and brokers in California, in the US as a whole. And this is for sure the path that we're going to do with them together in order to create relief for the communities, a community that will have fired over. And the sensors collect data all the time, 24-7, even if there's not a wildfire out there. Data is critical for insurance companies for transparency issues and such. This is critical. And we do expect to see either insurance companies reducing the premiums or re-insuring areas that they withdrew from all over the US.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 8:59

What kind of data can Fire Dome collect? Just give me three data points that you're collecting that would be a surprise.

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 9:06

Temperature, humidity levels, wind, speed, and directions, the visuals that we have on site. It's critical for insurance companies. For example, let's say a customer does vegetation management and reduces the dry vegetation load in his property. We can immediately show that to the insurance company. Look, this individual, he has a fire dome system, trims the vegetation that could be susceptible to fires, is doing a lot of work to make sure that the risk is mitigated and reduced. You have to reward the, you have to insure him or lower his premiums, right? Exactly.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 9:39

Amazing. And this is something that is done all around the year, not just when there's a wildfire. What do you think the world looks like in five years if every community that had high risk for fires had a fire dome system?

Guest Gadi Benjamini. Co-Founder & CEO. FireDome 9:52

Once we have fire dome systems in adjacent communities or adjacent properties, we can create city-level resilience, starting from the communities. I think that could help us make entire cities, entire counties, municipalities much, much safer as the insurance companies return to those areas that they withdrew from because the risk would be reduced. Obviously, FireDome cannot alone do that. We rely on the external data that flows into the system from satellite, great companies that do satellite and do early detection. Because there's a lot of data and it's fragmented, a lot of companies are trying to create a more clear path for the data to flow. Companies develop models to try and predict how the fires progress or embers progress with different winds. These are all tools that are developed now. There are a lot of great companies, and we're happy to be part of this amazing ecosystem of entrepreneurs and investors. And given that these things will be brought into fruition and implemented in the communities, and it's not just bottom-up. We need the governments also. We need the municipalities, the counties, the state to go in the same direction and implement these technologies. Insurance companies will obviously follow. I see a bright future for fire resilience, although there will be more fires.

Jeninfer Weissmann, Host 11:09

Flames don't wait for the fire department to arrive. And technology exists today in 2026 to save your home, your neighborhood as well. And it's called Fire Dome. And it was built in Israel to help you wherever you live in the world. If this conversation opened your eyes about fire risk, please share this episode. Post it on all of your social medias and hit subscribe. I'm your host, Jennifer Weisman. This is the Israeli Trailblazer Show. Your life is better because of the Israelis you've never met. And that's not politics. That's just a fact.