ALERT California: “Seeing” Fires from a Distance. What you can do to protect your property from wildfires. (2022)

"I am a Fire Captain in the CAL FIRE-San Diego Unit Emergency Command Center (ECC). We are an "Interagency Center," meaning we work directly alongside the Cleveland National Forest (CNF) dispatchers. Our center functions as a "blended" center, also meaning we will dispatch CAL FIRE resources and CNF simultaneously to an incident and vise versa. I cannot express enough how beneficial the use of the PTZ ALERTWildfire Cameras on the Alert SDG&E Camera system are for the fire service. Since we were granted access in 2017, we have utilized the cameras to detect and/or confirm fires in San Diego County area. The use of the PTZ cameras has been heavily utilized in the last year. Before we had access to the PTZ cameras, we would often go to the UCSD/HPWREN cameras for weather and fire/smoke checks in an area. The UCSD cameras take a still photo every 1-2 minutes, and then the user is responsible to "refresh" the browser to get an updated picture. Now, with access to the PTZ cameras, we are receiving a near-perfect live stream from the camera. Let me explain a little how we use the system: First, we receive an alarm for a wildland fire, smoke check, or another type of fire in an area from either 911 callers, field personnel, or any of our cooperating partners in San Diego County. Based on the location and type of report from the reporting party, a Fire Captain will then go to the PTZ Cameras and click on the link to the most appropriate camera that will have a visual of the reported problem and area. Based on what is visual can dictate our response. If we see smoke, then we know we have a fire; and we will start our appropriate response, which will include multiple ground resources and possibly multiple air resources (Air Attack, Air Tankers, and helicopters). If we do not see smoke, then we can send a response appropriate for a "smoke check" (1-2 engines typically). Last year, we had the "Lilac Fire" in December, which burned approximately 5,000 acres and multiple structures damaged or destroyed, and severe loss of horses at a thoroughbred training center. When we first received a report of the fire, we immediately went to the most appropriate camera and confirmed we had a fire. Based on the live stream of the camera, we were able to augment (increase our initial resources) on the initial dispatch due to the smoke conditions and the proximity to a mobile home park before we had the first unit at the scene. I feel that the use of the cameras aids us in being proactive and not reactive in our response. We would rather be ahead of the curve than playing catch-up. The other use of the PTZ cameras is for weather observations. Our center does weather observations three times a day. Based on the visual of our weather, we input a set data marker into a database that takes our observations and the local RAWS station information and converts it to numerical value for the Burning Index. We base our level of vegetation fire response (Low, Medium, High) on the numerical value of the burning index. As the network improves and more cameras are added to the system, I can see how this system will drastically improve our response to vegetation fires in the future and could possibly assist in the way we dispatch responses to a fire."