Month: September 2026

Abandoned campfire caused Yosemite Dome Fire that killed two pilots

The Dome Fire that has burned over 5,000 acres and caused the deaths of two pilots in Yosemite National Park was caused by an abandoned campfire, according to fire crews at the scene.

Investigators listed the fire’s cause on Inciweb, but did not release details on how they determined the cause. The fire’s latest update on Tuesday morning reported that containment is increasing while the fire’s growth continues to slow due to cooler temperatures and higher relative humidity.

“Crews were successful at tying in more of the fire perimeter to control lines along the north and northeast areas of the fire,” according to the latest update. “Firefighters continue to improve indirect and contingency lines ahead of the fire.”

Some incident personnel on Tuesday morning attended a procession in Modesto, California, for Ryan Cutter and Greg King, the two pilots who died in a helicopter crash while working the fire. The FAA’s initial incident notification said the helicopter, a Eurocopter AS32 Super Puma, crashed under unknown circumstances while on water bucket drops at the fire.

Personnel working the fire have attributed the increasing containment to several pack mules from the Shasta-Trinity National Forest delivering fire equipment and medical supplies to crews.

“These intelligent, strong animals provide invaluable support,” crews said. “Using pack mules allows helicopters to do other work, such as bucket drops; and mules can also be used in smoky conditions where a helicopter would not have good visibility to deliver supplies to a remote site.”

Read the Dome Fire’s Tuesday update here.

California Featured Article

Winning ideas to transform wildfire detection and response

Teams from across the world have competed to build transformative technology for wildfire detection and response. The winners were given hundreds of thousands of dollars to continue their development.

The teams were awarded the funds at the XPRIZE Wildfire Competition Awardee Ceremony at the New York City Fire Museum on Sept. 23. Nine of the 124 teams ended up winning prize money for their inventions focusing on either Space-Based Wildfire Detection & Intelligence and Autonomous Wildfire Response.

Along with the prize money, each winner will move forward to XPRIZE’s “Impact Phase,” which will use field trials to translate the technologies into real-world solutions for wildfire management.

“The awardee announcement marks an important milestone in the fight against destructive wildfires, but the breakthroughs that emerged from the competition are only the beginning,” XPRIZE said in a press release. “By catalyzing technological innovation and collaboration between innovators and wildfire experts, XPRIZE Wildfire has helped spur the development, adoption and investment needed to strengthen the accuracy of wildfire detection and the speed of response.”

The winners in the Space-Based Wildfire Detection & Intelligence section, according to the XPRIZE website, included:

First Place – System Integration Awardee, $500,000: SIRIUS Wildfire Alliance
SIRIUS Wildfire Alliance demonstrated comprehensive end-to-end and system integration methodology, integrating SAR and optical data to support fire characterization and spread modeling.
Second Place – Methodological Innovation Awardee, $250,000: Team Snuffed
Team Snuffed developed a probabilistic data-fusion framework designed to provide transparent, auditable and uncertainty-aware wildfire detection, with strong firefighter-facing usability.
Special Recognition, Commercial Viability, $100,000: MyRadar
As a commercially mature team, MyRadar utilized upstream satellite acquisition and demonstrated spatial precision.
Special Recognition, Operational Deliverable, $100,000: DeepFire
DeepFire demonstrated an operational fire-spread-alert capability designed to support wildfire detection and intelligence.
Special Recognition, Innovative Algorithm Application, $100,000: Mayday.AI
Mayday.AI applied an algorithm originally developed for volcanic-ash detection to identify wildfire smoke plumes through cloud cover.

The winners of the Autonomous Wildfire Response section included:

First Place Awardee, $1.2 Million: Anduril Industries
Anduril’s modular Lattice software platform provided a detection-to-suppression integrated pathway for cameras, sensors, and drones.
Second Place Awardee, $800,000: Dryad Networks
Dryad’s Silvanet, a 170-sensor persistent field network, combined with their Silvaguard drones, demonstrated end-to-end autonomy.
Third Place Awardee, $500,000: AURA Foresight
AURA successfully demonstrated autonomous and persistent detection, meeting the critical 10-minute detection gate.
Lockheed Martin Accurate Detection & Intelligence Bonus Prize, $1,000,000: Anduril Industries
Recognized for their rapid and precise multi-sensor detector performance.

Large fires across top of Australia

Fire management in the Northern Territory, Australia.

It is now peak fire season in Australia. In September? That’s news for Australia’s densely populated southerly regions two and half months away from a summer that is predicted to be an active one for bushfire as the El Nino takes hold.

But across the top half of the continent, the picture from the Northern Australia Fire Information shows that there are currently eight active fires with burnt areas larger than 100 square kilometres (38 square miles) across the Northern Territory right now. So, in terms of fire size alone, peak season it is.

The map below shows fires currently burning in the Northern Territory and the area (km2) burnt.

Fires currently burning and the area (km2) burnt so far, Northern Territory, Australia, September 2026. Graphic: NAFI

In total, more than 12 million hectares (29 million acres) have burnt across the NT in the last three weeks and the scene is becoming more extreme over the next month, as the north enters its late Dry Season.

Current fire extent numbers are on NAFI.

A few large fires account for the majority of all burnt area, with the 10 largest fires in the NT this year burning 1,837,712 hectares (4.4 million acres).

See the NAFI fire animations here

Rohan Fisher, from Charles Darwin University, notes that most of these bigger fires are in the central parts of the NT, where there is less fuel management.

“I should point out that this is not unusual and not all of these fires are necessarily bad”, he says of his NAFI data. “After years of big wet seasons (wet summers) there is a lot of fuel about. Further north where extensive, Indigenous led, fuel management is done. we don’t see fires of this scale.”

Further south, Queensland firefighters have battled more than 50 fires in recent weeks, with the South Burnett region currently the main point of activity.

And even further south, the Tasmania Fire Service was busy with 60 fires over the last week.

The 2026 fire season to September showing burnt areas across Northern Australia. Graphic: NAFI

Using a bot to help burn more fuel, more often

Burn Bot is large, tank-like vehicle that wants to solve the most troubling of fuel mitigation questions – how can you manage more area, across all sorts of terrain, in all sorts of weather, at all times of the year, without overtaxing or endangering local crews, and without smothering communities with smoke?

Mechanical fuel mitigation is not new, nor are air curtain burners (AirBurners, for example) or other mobile burning units (See the Blacklining Machine we wrote about in 2011). Burn Bot is a remotely operated, moving fire box that offers a neat option to burn at scale over extended windows across large areas of open terrain or in strategic or sensitive areas.

And neat is the word – Burn Bot can establish a remarkably clean and straight firebreak or containment line. Burn Bot hopes this will attract those who conduct roadside burns, or fuel reduction under powerlines or near sensitive built up areas such as schools, aged care centres or the other community hubs.

After establishing itself on the west coast in the United States, with a base in San Francisco, a single Burn Bot vehicle has just arrived in south-east Queensland, Australia.

It sparked a fair bit of interest at the recent AFAC2026 Fire and Emergency Services conference trade show in Melbourne where Head of Australia for Burn Bot, Clinton Neumann, pitched it as a bigger and better way to get loads more fuel mitigation completed.

“What we are looking to do is to scale up the amount of treatment that can happen across landscapes, to mitigate the impact of destructive wildfires. One of the constraints of prescribed fire is the weather window, where the opportunity to put in prescribed fire becomes increasingly complex and more limited,” says Neumann.

“Because we can control the temperatures in the chamber and dial it up to suite the fuel bed you are operating in, it really gives you a much broader range of operating conditions. You can burn really uncured, green grass, right through to conditions that would be a bit marginal for open burning. It stretches the envelope at both ends.”

The three rows of propane burners aim to operate between 750 to 800 degrees Celsius, with an upper limit of 1100 degrees Celsius, inside the combustion chamber. It travels at the walking pace of the operator beside it with the remote-control device, with a spotter close by to make it a two-person operation at a minimum. The unit has water sprayers all round to catch any escapes but in most circumstances there is also a local crew present on a tanker.

In conditions considered less suitable for the Burn Bot (dense forests, rocky ground, steep gullies), the company brings in its other remote-controlled machines including mulchers or traditional hand-held means.

It is early days for considering it for use in suppression work. It would be a brave fire manager who brought it into a landscape already in a wildfire situation, but under some circumstances it could be used for containment lines.

“Potentially, it could be used for defensive firing operations, where you have got a lot of open edge and grassy country. It’s capable of burning 24-7, so overnight work to put in containment lines could be a good use for it.”

The almost absence of smoke is the other aspect that caught people’s attention at the AFAC2026 expo. With such high temperatures in the fully contained chamber, the amount of combustion smoke is minimal.

“Most of the product you see coming out is actually steam from the moisture content in the fuel…We did some comparisons with open burning and with air curtain burners and things like that, and it performs pretty well.”

The lack of prescribed burning smoke is appealing to complex environments, such as in California, which have strict requirements on air quality. “In California, which is the most complex environment we operate in, it is often exempt from any of the air quality permit requirements.”

Burn Bot is pitching its service to a range of potential users – fire and land agencies, state and local government, large private land holders and utilities. The plan is not so much to sell the units, but to offer a full-service fuel mitigation business where the Burn Bot is one component alongside mulching and other conventional methods.

Canada’s largest fire detector acquires US wildfire business despite barriers

Wildfire detection company SenseNet, Canada’s largest wildfire detection operator, recently announced the acquisition of N5 Sensors‘ wildfire-related assets, a semiconductor producer in the United States, despite the company’s recent failure in a federal audit and the two nations being in the middle of a trade war.

N5 builds environmental and chemical sensor platforms for air quality analysis, hazardous chemical monitoring and early wildfire detection, according to the company’s website. SenseNet acquired the company’s fire-sensing technology just months after the sensors failed an audit conducted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

SenseNet CEO and Founder Hamed Noori told Wildfire Today that he and his company were aware of the failed audit before the acquisition, deciding that the audit’s report did not accurately reflect N5’s technology nor how it would operate under SenseNet. He added that he believes N5’s integration into SenseNet would only add to his company’s ability to monitor wildfires.

SenseNet also monitors more than 400 million acres of wildlands across 10 other countries. The company focuses on smoldering-phase gas sensors, long-range AI cameras, and satellite intelligence, among other technologies.

The acquisition also comes amid an escalating trade war between the U.S. and Canada, triggered after President Donald Trump imposed 50% tariffs on numerous goods from Canada entering the U.S. on Aug. 19, and explicitly includes electronics and telecom equipment like those SenseNet and N5 rely on, along with vehicle parts, lumber, and agricultural goods. Canada exported more than $4 billion worth of electronics equipment to the U.S. in 2025 that would now be subject to the tariffs, largely made up of electrical boards and controllers.

Canada’s responded by instituting 25% tariffs on $30 billion worth of American goods on August 22 then issued more retaliatory tariffs on September 8, including taxes ranging between 15 and 50% on a list of more than 700 U.S. goods, including semiconductor-related parts and other technology goods.

Noori told Wildfire Today he expects the ongoing trade war to minimally impact his business, if at all.

“For one, the sensors are relatively cheap and the majority of our value comes from our platform and AI that detects the wildfires,” Noori said. “Secondly, wildfire prevention is an issue that transcends politics as both countries collaborate deeply and share resources.”

Canada Featured Article United States

Fatal Yosemite Dome Fire helicopter crash details and pilot identities released

The two pilots killed in a helicopter crash while fighting the Dome Fire in Yosemite National Park have been identified by the helicopter’s owner, and the Federal Aviation Administration has released preliminary details on the crash.

The Precision aerospace company identified the men as Greg King and Ryan Cutter in a post on their social media account late Monday night. The company did not release further details on King or Cutter but acknowledged the public’s thoughts and prayers.

“These two men deserve every single one of them, as do their families and friends,” a company representative said in the post. “These two men brought honor to the mission. Their dedication and service will never be forgotten.”

The FAA’s initial incident notification said the helicopter, a Eurocopter AS32 Super Puma, crashed under unknown circumstances while on water bucket drops at the fire. The administration listed one flight crew member and one passenger on the helicopter.

The Dome Fire has burned 3,324 acres and is 15% contained as of Tuesday morning, according to fire crews at the scene. The fire continued to spread into the 2017 Empire Fire footprint, whiile a spot fire to the east grows. Officials expect spotting to continue as the fire moves north into heavy dead and down fuels.

“Fire behavior will remain moderate, with spotting behavior being a big challenge in the full suppression efforts of this fire,” officials said in the Monday morning update. “We continue to stage structure firefighters at Yosemite West and Wawona, supporting local communities and continuing prep work and contingencies.”

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Two dead in helicopter crash at the Dome Fire in Yosemite National Park

California Featured Article United States

Two dead in helicopter crash at the Dome Fire in Yosemite National Park

Two flight crew members were killed on Sunday when their firefighting helicopter crashed at the Dome Fire burning in Yosemite National Park, according to the company that owned the helicopter.

Aerospace company Precision confirmed the two crew members’ deaths to WildfireToday. A company spokesperson said representatives are working to notify family members of those who were killed and that the National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration are leading an investigation into the incident. They did not share details on the events leading up to the crash.

“It is with unimaginable sadness and broken hearts that we share the loss of two beloved members of our team,” Precision said in a statement. “We are devastated by this loss and are struggling to find the words. We ask for privacy and compassion for their families and our team as we grieve this tremendous loss.”

Here is an update from the Alaska Division of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The Dome Fire burned 2,667 acres as of Sunday morning, according to crews working the fire. The fire continues to grow into the 2017 Empire Fire footprint, which burned 8,094 acres northeast of Wawona, California. The presence of abundant fuels in the area is driving fire spread.

“Heavy fuel conditions continue to pose challenges for ground-based suppression resources as they continue to utilize natural barriers such as granite outcroppings and bare areas in the northwest flank,” according to the latest incident update. “Fire is moving through red fir fuel type, which is conducive to spotting and susceptible to burning.”

Fire managers expected an incoming weak weather system to spread clouds and lower temperatures throughout the fire area on Sunday.

California Featured Article United States

How drones can better integrate with total incident response

By Usama Mehboob

Wildfire drone operations have moved beyond the question of whether an unmanned aircraft can find heat or provide an overhead view. The harder problem is fitting another aircraft and another stream of data into an incident that may already involve helicopters, air tankers, lead planes, ground crews and changing airspace restrictions. For response professionals, useful drone work starts with aviation integration, disciplined mission planning and a clear path from observation to action.

Airspace Coordination Comes Before Sensor Capability

Temporary Flight Restrictions (TFR) around active wildfires are intended to protect firefighting aircraft and crews. Unauthorized drones can interrupt crewed aviation, yet authorized public safety flights still have to fit inside the same incident aviation structure. A technically successful mission can become an operational problem if the aircraft location, altitude or flight window conflicts with a helicopter or tanker assignment.

Authorized drone operations on active wildfires already work within established incident command and aviation structures. The challenge is maintaining that integration as UAS missions become more frequent, longer-range and increasingly complex. A drone may be operating under incident authority, but its flight area, altitude, timing, communications and data requirements still have to remain aligned with changing crewed-aircraft operations throughout the operational period.

For that reason, UAS coordination should extend beyond initial flight approval. Flight areas, altitude limits, lost-link procedures and an immediate grounding process need to be understood before launch and reviewed as incident conditions change. TFR and NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) information can also change during an operational period, so a single preflight review is not enough for a long mission cycle.

Key operating priorities include:

Define operating areas and altitude limits before launch.
Keep direct coordination between Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) personnel and incident aviation staff.
Recheck TFR and NOTAM information as conditions change.
Give aviation supervisors clear authority to stop unmanned flights when crewed aircraft need the airspace.

Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) missions can extend observation beyond practical ground access, but range brings new problems. Communications reliability, aircraft tracking, detect and avoid methods and lost link behavior become part of the safety case. More distance is useful only when the incident team can still account for the aircraft and control the mission.

Drone Over a Smoking Forest Fire — Image created by ZenaDrone

Thermal Imaging Has Limits That Matter on a Fireground

Thermal imaging can support hotspot searches, perimeter assessment and detection of residual heat. The risk is treating a thermal image as a final answer. Vegetation, terrain, sensor angle, smoke, heated surfaces and distance can change what the operator sees. A bright signature may need field confirmation, and hidden combustion may remain difficult to characterize from one aerial pass.

Repeated observations tied to coordinates are often more useful than a single image. The operational question should be simple: what decision will this flight support? A drone that detects heat outside a containment line may provide valuable intelligence. That value drops very quickly if the location remains on the pilot display and does not reach the people assigning resources.

Endurance and Night Operations

Battery endurance is another practical constraint, particularly across large incidents. Published flight time matters less than usable mission time after wind, distance, payload, reserve requirements and repeated recovery cycles are considered. Crews may spend a surprising amount of the operational period managing batteries, charging and launch locations rather than collecting data.

Night flights can support thermal observation during periods of reduced visibility, but darkness changes the risk picture. Terrain references become harder to judge and recovery may require more planning. Night activity still needs to remain coordinated with other aviation. It cannot be assumed that the absence of daylight means the airspace is available.

Data Integration Is the Larger Opportunity

Wildfire agencies already collect large amounts of information. Drones can add thermal images, video, maps and coordinates at a pace that becomes difficult to use. The real objective is not collecting more data. It is moving a smaller amount of verified information to the right person soon enough to influence a decision.

Different agencies may arrive with different mapping platforms, radio systems and data procedures. This can make a simple location report harder to share than expected. Incident teams benefit when drone outputs use common geospatial formats and when responsibility for validating and distributing UAS intelligence is defined in advance.

Autonomous docking stations may make repeated observation easier by supporting automated launch, recovery and charging. They still require reliable communications, weather limits, updated airspace information and a clear way to interrupt a mission when incident priorities change. Autonomy can reduce routine workload, but it does not remove accountability to incident command.

The strongest wildfire use of drones is likely to come from integration rather than aircraft quantity. Better airspace deconfliction, disciplined thermal interpretation, practical BVLOS procedures and interoperable data sharing can make UAS missions more useful without adding unnecessary risk. Wildfire response does not need drones flying simply because they are available. It needs missions with a defined purpose, controlled access to the airspace and a direct connection between observation and action.

Usama Mehboob is a Content Writer at ZenaDrone Inc, covering drone technology, its applications and related industry developments. More at www.zenadrone.com/wildfires/

aerial firefighting drones

Track US states’ new wildfire laws for utilities with this interactive map

Hawaii’s Lahaina Fire killed over 100 people and destroyed thousands of buildings. California’s Eaton Fire triggered the evacuation of over 100,000 residents. Texas’ Smokehouse Creek Fire burned over one million acres.

These are just some of the many fires that were ignited by electrical utility infrastructure in the US. The fallout from these disasters has triggered a wave of recent legislation rewriting the rules of how utilities operate in numerous US states, but officials at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Smart Electric Power Alliance said lawmakers lacked a way to track how each state is addressing the problem.

The two organizations, in response, created a new interactive map that provides a state-by-state view of wildfire-focused utility laws. The tracker shows which states are pursuing wildfire mitigation strategies, along with which measures have passed or failed.

“Research shows that states considered more wildfire-related legislation in 2025 than they had during the previous 10 years combined,” the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory said in a press release. ” Currently, the map shows 44 legislative and regulatory actions across 18 states. PNNL and SEPA plan to update the map as new actions are introduced.”

The agencies had previously been tracking wildfire-focused utility legislation on their own, but decided to combine their efforts after representatives met at a conference and started comparing notes, according to the press release. Their new goal is to translate policy developments across states into something policymakers can act on.

The tracker also offers an alternative for those involved in wildfire mitigation planning who would otherwise have to search through hundreds of documents cast in state-specific contexts buried within bill management systems in state legislative sessions, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Electricity Infrastructure Advisor Rebecca O’Neil said in the press release.

“States across the country can benefit from an interactive tool like WRAPT – from states in the West as they consider policy options and interactions, states in the Midwest as they consider best practices and get in front of this issue as it arrives and states in the East adapting this playbook as they balance utility investment against the threat of wildfire,” O’Neil said.

Click here to use the tracker for yourself.

Being a good leader starts with being a good person

By Michael DeGrosky

Being a good leader starts with being a good person – in his Wildfire magazine column Mike DeGrosky rediscovers the early influences that shaped his core beliefs.

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by renowned political scientist and author Robert Putnam, who was speaking on making democracy work. While decrying the decline of social clubs and organizations in the United States and the resulting loss of social capital, Putnam mentioned the traditional Boy Scout creed. On the night of the lecture, I made a note to myself to check out the Boy Scout creed. My scouting career was brief, having never gone much beyond Cub Scouts, but my older brother’s copy of the Boy Scout Handbook was a prized possession, owing to my love of the outdoors and outdoor skills, and I continued to reference it for years.

This article is first published in Wildfire Magazine – read the full edition.

I had convinced myself that I had developed my leadership ethos from a combination of professional experience and advanced education. But what I had intended as a casual review of the Boy Scout creed reminded me that early influences, even fleeting ones, helped form the values that underlie my leadership philosophy. What was Boy Scouts of America when I was a kid is now Scouting USA but the Scout Oath and Scout Law have remained remarkably stable.

For a long time now, I have told students of leadership that being a good leader starts with being a good person. If Wildfire readers have seen or heard me describe someone as a person of integrity, a person of character, or even just one of the good ones, they have witnessed me paying a person my highest compliment. I have spent what some might consider an inordinate amount of time considering how my core values, including my beliefs about integrity and character, infuse my leadership ethos. Recently, I went the other direction, comparing my core values to an early and nearly forgotten influence.

When I stripped away the religious and nationalistic elements at the core of the scouting mission, the influence on the values that shape my leadership philosophy seemed clear, beginning with a sense of duty and doing your best. Leadership is a duty, a threefold duty to one’s organization, to the people we lead, and to oneself. Leading well means giving our best; not as a perfect, flawless leader, but as one striving to be as good as we can be while pursuing the hard, often messy work of leading.

Twelve points make up the Scout Law, and six – being trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, and kind – resonate with me. Each are values, or exist within values, that I imperfectly strive to live. The six values also align with my strong belief that we must lead with compassion, empathy, and respect for people.

Trust is, of course, the cornerstone of effective leadership. No one willingly follows a person they do not trust or who does not trust them.

Leadership thrives in an environment of reciprocal trust, one in which leaders earn loyalty by first showing loyalty, by investing in relationships, and by demonstrating support for the people they wish to lead. Both in the Scout Oath and the associated Scout Law, the orientation toward being of service and helping others aligns with a servant leadership orientation and placing, over personal ambition and privilege, a sincere desire to help and uplift others.

We know that compassionate and empathetic leaders, by building deep connections with the people they lead, generate trust and loyalty. We also know that trust and loyalty represent the bedrock of leadership. There exists a long-standing assumption that being a friendly leader might somehow prove detrimental to effective leadership. Additionally, people who maintain a classical leadership perspective might dismiss leading with friendliness, kindness and courtesy as soft. However, leadership researchers are increasingly offering a counter-narrative that leaders focused on building strong relationships and creating a positive work environment are actually more effective. For example, writing for Harvard Business.com, Rasmus Hougaard and Angela Gest-McCall provided a more contemporary view, observing that studies have found that compassionate leaders are actually perceived by followers as stronger and more competent.

There are, of course, limits to leading in a friendly manner. A responsible leader must balance friendliness with professional boundaries to ensure fairness and respect for authority. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that friendly, kind, and courteous leaders who build connection and signal their intention to benefit the people under their stewardship, produce results.

Comparing my core values to an almost forgotten influence proved an interesting exercise, reminding me that early influences helped shape the values that power my leadership ethos. And I am still confident in my belief that being a good leader must start with being a good person. So, my advice to would-be leaders remains to build reciprocal trust, earn loyalty by showing loyalty, place desire to help and uplift others over personal ambition and privilege, be friendly, be courteous, and be kind. In short, lead with compassion, empathy and respect. Be a person of character. Be a person of integrity. Be one of the good ones.

Mike DeGrosky is a student of leadership, lifelong learner, mentor and coach, sometimes writer, and recovering fire chief. He taught for the Department of Leadership Studies at Fort Hays State University for 10 years. Follow Mike on LinkedIn.

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