(I was inspired to join the site by jorgeinovate's grenade.)
Being a fan of military hardware finding commercial use, here is my proposal.
A modern artillery team is able to place destructive shells with appreciable precision with little more than some trigonometry and faith in gravity. The ordnance of choice in this application is flame retardant (FR), similar to that dumped by existing helicopters and planes. To maximize effectiveness, a cluster fragmentation shell containing smaller FR bomblets would be used; the main shells would either be proximity-fuzed or time-fuzed according to a ballistics computer; the bomblets would disperse on impact or in reaction to temperature.
The advantages over aircraft dispersion are many:- Faster alarm response--artillery cannons can be mounted on special fire trucks or towed separately for disaster response.- Less fuel consumed versus multiple aircraft passes.- More precise placement is possible since shells do not drift as much as dumped FR through turbulent updraft or firestorms.- Application is "indirect"--aircraft must risk passage above searing flames and smoke; cannons can be stationed miles away.
The tradeoff in maximum rate of FR dispersion is arguable. While planes can carry many tons of water/powder, it might be quicker to field a group of guns, each of which could reload in a fraction of a minute. I also believe an artillery gun and its complement of shells would cost less.
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I should probably mention more on the scope. Smaller engines could carry mortars for residential fields near streets. Larger guns would be used on more catastrophic fires. I see firefighting artillery used more for open fires rather than on buildings, though I wouldn't limit the idea. Guns could be mounted on helicopters to strike at high-rise fires.
The MetalStorm company is already working on this. Their specific application was high rise fires, though. Current fire engines cannot pump much above around the 6th storey, so higher level fires cannot be attacked by appliances. MetalStorm was talking about using their ultra-high rate-of-fire automatic grenade launcher (which is still a prototype at this point) to launch a barrage of thousands of tiny fire extinguishing grenades into high rise fires.