Screenshot from FirePhotoGirl’s dash cam video before she turned around on Painted Cave Road. Used with her permission.
While reporting on the Cave Fire near Santa Barbara, California a fire photographer encountered a little more wildfire activity than she expected.
FirePhotoGirl is very active in coverage of fires and other emergency incidents, shooting footage for Southern California media as well as her twitter account, @FirePhotoGirl.
On November 25 just before midnight she was on the Cave Fire driving her vehicle down Painted Cave Road when she made what looks like a good decision to turn around. She described it like this when posting the dash cam video on YouTube:
Painted Cave – I was trying to go down and had to turn around. If you cant tell it was a little too warm. Do not try this or put yourself in harms way. This was very dangerous.
An example of an output from the Fire Integrated Real-Time Intelligence System (FIRIS) used on the Cave Fire near Santa Barbara, CA November 26, 2019. The dots with arrows represent weather stations. Inciweb.
A new real time wildfire mapping system was used on the Cave Fire near Santa Barbara, California this week.
In September the Orange County Fire Authority began a 150-day pilot program to use and evaluate the Fire Integrated Real-Time Intelligence System (FIRIS). The program got off the ground thanks to funding secured in the 2019-2020 California state budget by Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Laguna Beach).
The system utilizes a fixed-wing aircraft equipped with infrared and radar sensors that can see through smoke. The plane provides real-time fire perimeter mapping and live high definition video to support supercomputer-based wildfire predictive spread modeling.
Screenshot of aircraft featured in the FIRIS B-Roll video.
A supercomputer at the University of California San Diego runs WIFIRE spread projections based on fire perimeter data collected by the aircraft. The output estimates where the fire will be in the next six hours. The fire spread model adjusts for successful fire suppression actions by firefighters on the ground and in the air. This intel allows for more timely and accurate decision making for resource allocation and evacuations.
The flight path of N4717V, a Turbo Commander 690, also known as “AC90”. It was orbiting over the Cave Fire at 12,400 feet on November 26, 2019. Flightaware map. The FIRIS aircraft, shown as “AC90”, was over the Cave Fire along with two S-2T air tankers, at 7:52 a.m. November 26, 2019. Flightradar24
If I am correctly interpreting the WIFIRE product at the top of this article the system predicted that the Cave Fire would grow from 4,994 to 8,880 acres over a 90-minute period beginning at 10:56 a.m. on November 26, 2019. Spot fires were predicted more than a mile ahead. However, decreasing winds that day slowed the spread. A weather station in San Marcos Pass about three miles northwest of the fire recorded sustained wind speeds from 1 to 5 mph between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Rain beginning at 2 a.m. November 27 stopped the spread at 4,330 acres.
Weather at San Marcos Pass, November 26-27, 2019.
The video below is “B-Roll”, that is, unedited footage of the FIRIS system. The first 6.5 minutes are simply images of aircraft, but after that you will be able to look over the shoulder of the imagery technician as he observes infrared imagery of a fire, manually interprets the heat signatures, then traces the fire perimeter on the screen. That perimeter could then be electronically sent to the super computer in San Diego County which would run a fire spread model to predict what the fire will do in the next six hours.
Our attempts to obtain more information about FIRIS from personnel on the Cave Fire that used the system were not successful.
