As wildfires in California and beyond have grown larger and deadlier in recent years, some in the firefighting sector say the tools and technologies used to combat new blazes have not kept up with the impact of climate change.
and has consumed some 216,646 acres. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, reported it at 49% contained on Tuesday.
"Anytime there is a fire started anywhere in California, a simulation is started so that the field commanders have that real-time information from the minute a fire starts," he added."It populates that fire based on where the fire was reported, that may not be accurate of where the fire actually is, so when the first arriving engines get on scene, they give a more updated report of location and then another report is generated and that will be more accurate.
Hundreds of high-tech cameras have also been posted in remote, fire-prone areas in the West to help discover fire ignition and monitor fire behavior by ALERTWildfire, a consortium backed by three universities that has received both public and private funding.
Ingalsbee said part of this is due to the culture and loose organization of agencies, many of which are crewed by volunteers . Costs, limited staffing and"bureaucratic inertia" also impedes the widespread adoption of new technology, he added. Wildfire Today's Gabbert echoed Ingalsbee's sentiments about adoption of tech, telling ABC News that"the technology exists, it just has not been implemented."
"In the fire space, there's a lot of brave men and women doing a lot of really critical roles, but the tools that we use are basically the same tools have been used for the past 50 or 100 years," he told ABC News."They really haven't seen the same level of progress and innovation that you've seen in most of the other tools that we use in our day-to-day lives."
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