Satellites can help with fire detection. So can binoculars

As California turns to satellite imagery, remote cameras watched by AI and heat detection sensors placed throughout wildlands to detect fires earlier, one Orange County group is keeping it old-school.

- BY NOAH HAGGERTY

PHIL Sallaway, from left, and Yang Fei are among Orange County Fire Watch's fire-finding volunteers.

Whenever the National Weather Service issues a red flag warning, a sign that dangerous fire weather is imminent, Renalynn Funtanilla swiftly sends alerts to her more than 300 volunteers' phones and inboxes.

She wheels TVs into a conference room turned makeshift command center, sets up computers and phones around the table and dispatches volunteers to dozens of trailheads and roadways in Orange County's wildland-urban interface: likely spots for the county's next devastating fire to erupt.

The volunteers - sporting bright yellow vests and navy blue hats with an "Orange County Fire Watch" emblem - slap large fire watch magnets to the sides of their vehicles, grab some binoculars and start to watch.

Amid California's coastal sage scrub and chaparral ecosystems that are plagued with frequent fast-moving fires, preventing ignitions and stamping out fires before they become unmanageable is the name of the game.

To do it, Orange County Fire Watch is betting on good Samaritans teaching the public how to prevent ignitions and keeping an eye out for potential culprits, from overheating e-bikes to arsonists. (In Orange County, human-operated equipment has historically been responsible for about 34% of wildfires documented by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, while arsonists have started about 15%.) Despite the program's simplicity, fire experts say this system might be one of our best shots at stifling coastal California's wildfire problem.