Cameras designed to be fire containment tool
By Ann Harmon
Drought? Never mind, the Tahoe basin hasn’t a problem. People who live here, people who visit, they’ll have plenty of water with Lake Tahoe nearby. But doesn’t a drought mean its forests are drying out, that many trees will die? Well, sure, but fire fighters and equipment are great these days. Tahoe will be fine.
Have we forgotten the 2007 Angora Fire? Dismissed the $160 million it cost, the 254 homes burned? Do we remember last year’s 97,000-acre King Fire fought for more than a month, costing $5 million per day? That came close to Tahoe, too close.
If Tahoe burns, a national treasure will be gone. Maybe we should pay attention after all. We have not been this dry for 1,200 years.
Left: Pilot program cameras; right: build out. Images/UNR
The UNR Seismological Laboratory, under Director Graham Kent, recognizes exactly what the drought means: possible basin fires. When the Lab learned of Forest Guard, an international 2009 award winning project of young students in Meadow Vista, it worked with them and with Sony Europe to develop a Tahoe plan. The ALERT Tahoe project is now under way to place 15 cameras around Tahoe to film any basin fire within seconds of its start using on-demand time lapse imagery. Four units are now in place.
The first aha was last August when Mac Heller with the U.S. Forest Service on a fire near Fresno logged onto the camera at Snow Valley Peak. He spotted a small lightning strike fire north of Spooner Summit. Firefighters put it out at less than half an acre.
The USFS-CalFire interagency joint command center in Camino now watches cameras 24/7. Pictures also go to the USFS, CalFire, BLM and local fire districts around the basin.
Axis HD cameras with 32x pan-tilt-zoom capability provide panoramic views from towers built on solid rock, also carrying early warning earthquake detectors. Notably, the BLM has funded these same cameras for Central and Northeast Nevada to catch sagebrush and forest fires. At $3,500 each, cameras have a three-year guarantee. Each station’s complete system of independent microwave communications, power systems, and other expenses is a $15,000 to $30,000 investment.
Towers withstand snow, high winds and earthquakes, so durable that inspections can be limited to two visits a year. This is a good thing. Access can be very difficult. Cameras, when funded, will ultimately provide coverage from Peavine to McClellan Peaks and possibly from Sierra-at-Tahoe and the western slope of the Sierra.
The ALERT Tahoe program is being funded by public grants and private donations. New donations are critical to roll the system out as rapidly as possible. Tahoe can’t wait. This summer, if $50,000 is raised quickly through private donations, installations will be placed above Zephyr Cove and, hopefully, on Martis Peak. If additional donations and site approvals are secured early this summer, possibly two other stations would be built, one on Diamond Peak, one above Cal Neva.
Two million dollars would provide the system and operating funds for a decade. Remarkably, that is only 1.25 percent of the cost of the Angora Fire. Kent notes that, were $2 million immediately available, camera eyes could be placed within two years on 15 towers. Delayed funding would take three to four years more.
System maps, cameras and donation information are on ALERT Tahoe’s website.
Also under way, with financing by the National Science Foundation and the Nevada Governor’s Knowledge Fund, is UNR lab’s research into using drones for quickly communicating real-time imagery during fires. Plans are to team with UC San Diego to share ideas and save possible costs, including crowd sourcing fire watching.
Ann Harmon is a retired research chemist who lives in Stateline.
High tech at work is great , but it’s not in place yet , but could be within 2 years !
MAN THE EXISTING FIRE WATCH BUILDINGS !!
Why is it that we have to wait for a camera system to be installed ??? And can not simply use existing towers , one of which was recently featured in L T N article regarding angora ridge.
Coincidently the angora ridge lookout looks down on the area where the fire started !!!!!
Perhaps when some really high priced real estate burns the thought train will change.
How many homes and acres of forest have to burn before common sense prevails duh!
I will willingly volunteer my time to man the lookout , as I’m sure many of you out there would, BEFORE the next fire that we are told will surely occur.
I have personally called in several fires from the vantage point out on the lake.
Channel 2 news today reporting high risk of fire with high winds.
What say you fellow readers.
Kiwi.
Back again !
Watching the news , Big bear is going up in flames , 10,000 acres already homes being evacuated guess they should have invested in new technology.
They probably have old fire watch towers unmanned and going to ruin.
A recent nat geo photo shows a little man standing atop a very tall tree on watch for fires. Not to worry there isn’t any water to put out the fire.
A recipe for disaster.
Not trying to knock technology but until it is in place why do we have to see another fire on the news at 10,000 acres ?
The money it costs to pay fire fighters to battle the flames is huge.
Just a tiny fraction of which could easily cover paid lookouts , and allow the fires to be extinguished BEFORE they grew to uncontrollable size.
????????????
I had the opportunity to work a fire lookout back in 1988, the year yellowstone burned, and it was one of the best jobs I have ever had. The lookout was a drive up from Stanley, idaho. About 20 miles of unimproved back country roads. The lookout was built on a rocky mountain top so it wasnt like alot of fire towers up 100 stairs. Back in the 80’s there were many fire lookouts that had human occupants. There was a group of people trained for this work who came back for years and years to the same lookout. While I was stationed at my lookout i helped several initial attack planes navigate the rugged terrain to get smoke jumpers into remote areas as 100, s of lightning strikes hit my area. The job required the person to sit on a chair with insulators and try to track where the lightning strikes were hitting. After the storm passed you go to your chart and start pinpointing the strikes and then you spend hours looking through binoculars for “smokes”.
Its not a job for everyone and these opportunities are few and far between now a days as more sophisticated tools are used. I just feel very lucky to have had the opportunity once upon a time. Alot of fire lookouts are available for hikers to access when in the back country. There are volunteer groups that do restoration work on the lookouts as well.
Steve,
I say any time the government is involved, common sense is thrown out the window. We’ve seen it over and over.
Kits, generalities are great for quips but fail to tell the whole story. You obviously never worked for a large corporation so you can see inefficiencies run amok in the private world (large corporations make money often in spite of themselves). Due to gov, we have safer buildings, 20,000 people do not die when a large earth quake hits, air travel is remarkable safe, our water and air is cleaner today then in the 1960s and 1970s (we also have a lot more people). We have significant infrastructure of highways, etc. So no, large organizations (gov or corps) are not always the epitome of efficiency, but I for one, find the collaboration of public, private and the non-profit world a reasonably good model.
Rick
Thanks for the article Ann.
What strikes me about the two million dollars that are needed is that in just the past few months this paper has run stories detailing public monies wasted on one thing or another…incompetent, over-paid employees, consultants hired to tell us things we already know, projects that seem to serve little purpose etc etc. Seems if we can throw huge sums of money on the above, we should be able to come up with two million dollars for something as worthwhile as this.
Also, if the Forest Service got this going then it could be relieved of the job of over-thinning and destroying our forests and wildlife habitat.