In 2021, during a summer vacation in Boston, friends Barrett Deng and Sebastien Burkhardt witnessed something familiar to anyone living in the Bay Area: skies filled with smoke from nearby or distant wildfires. The smoke hovering over the East Coast had been blown there from wildfires burning in Canada. The experience opened the teens’ eyes to just how big a problem wildfires are. “We realized this was not just the California issue,” Deng said.  In true Silicon Valley fashion, Deng, 17, and Burkhardt, 18, headed into a garage to invent something that could help in the fight against wildfires.  They developed Clore, a nontoxic, long-term fire retardant that can be sprayed on vegetation surrounding a property to help protect it in the event of a wildfire. “Obviously, you had the planes that dropped the red stuff,” Deng said. “But a lot of times the homeowners couldn’t really get their hands on something like that.” After Clore passed California State Fire Marshal tests, the teenage entrepreneurs found a market among private firefighting companies, some of which worked with homeowners affected by the Palisades and Eaton fires. Jugs of Clore had been placed this past summer around roughly 50 properties, ready to be sprayed at the first sign of danger. “When the ember cast came through during the wildfires, none of the plants were catching on fire and the only thing (firefighters) had to deal with was the active flame,” Burkhardt said. A handful of the homes where Clore was deployed encountered active fire during the recent disaster. All of those homes survived. Deng and Burkhardt do not claim Clore is the reason the homes didn’t burn, saying it was just one part of the defense provided by private fire companies. Still, they are proud of the role their product played in giving homeowners a better chance at protecting their property. “I just feel very happy to be able to have made an impact and help out people during this time of crisis. I think it’s something that we both take very seriously,” Deng said.