Using Water Tenders — fire trucks also referred to as tankers that are designed to carry large amounts of water — and portable folding water tanks, firefighters can shuttle water to the tanks to support firefighting operations.

The water takes away heat by cooling the fire. Water also smothers the fire, taking away oxygen. Some firefighters use foam as an alternative to water. Fire extinguishers also use foam to fight fires.

Using water is one common method to extinguish a fire. Water extinguishes a fire by cooling, which removes heat because of water’s ability to absorb massive amounts of heat as it converts to water vapor. Without heat, the fuel cannot keep the oxidizer from reducing the fuel in order to sustain the fire.

Fire can be put out with seawater, though it is not usually used to do so. Saltwater can effectively extinguish fire, but it may damage firefighting equipment and hurt plant life if used. Saltwater use creates problems for both the water distributing equipment and the surrounding environment.

Electrical fires: simply because salt water is a good conductor of electricity, so using salt water may increase the risk of electrocution.

Thirdly, water bombers cannot (or do not) operate at night and under high winds, the very conditions when the most damaging forest fires occur. Sea water could be used, provided the tankers have access to it, but dropping salt water onto catchment areas or farms would only add to the problems caused by the fire.

Seawater/ saltwater is not flammable and will not catch fire. It could even be used to put out fires, the same as freshwater. But water is water and it’s not flammable. Though technically, if you can make water hot enough to split into its two individual elements hydrogen and oxygen – they are flammable.

Human kidneys can only make urine that is less salty than salt water. Therefore, to get rid of all the excess salt taken in by drinking seawater, you have to urinate more water than you drank. Eventually, you die of dehydration even as you become thirstier.

Why can’t people drink sea water? Seawater is toxic to humans because your body is unable to get rid of the salt that comes from seawater. Your body’s kidneys normally remove excess salt by producing urine, but the body needs freshwater to dilute the salt in your body for the kidneys to work properly.

Desalination is the process of turning salty ocean water into drinking water. These countries also have hardly any groundwater or fresh water sources so desalination is a case of innovation by necessity. These countries make up the one percent of the world currently relying on desalination to meet water needs.

You can use any piece of cloth—even the shirt on your back—or a non-poisonous grass mesh to slowly filter solid particles from your salt water. Catch the filtered water with a plastic bottle so you can better see if there are improvements in the clarity of your water.

While our planet as a whole may never run out of water, it’s important to remember that clean freshwater is not always available where and when humans need it. In fact, half of the world’s freshwater can be found in only six countries. More than a billion people live without enough safe, clean water.