Immediate Response >> Communication
Editor's Note: High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN) cameras and com- munications continue to prove useful in combating wildfires. On June 30, 2006, several HPWREN cameras captured real-time visuals of a wildfire at the Riverside/ San Diego county line that shut down of portions of a busy California freeway and threatened the Santa Margarita Ecological Reserve. The California Depart- ment of Forestry and Fire Prevention extinguished the blaze before it turned into a large-scale disaster. For an HPWREN press release about newly updated cameras and how they captured the June 30 wildfire on film, see: http://hpwren.ucsd.edu/news/20060712/.
Reliable communication is essential at disaster sites, particularly for local, state and federal agencies that have lost access to phone lines, power stations and roads.
In July 2003, lightning touched off the Coyote Fire in a remote corner of San Diego County, Calif. The resulting blaze eventually scorched 19,000 acres. In response, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) deployed 1,700 firefighters, 10 helicopters and several bulldozers.
To link the power of
the Internet to the isolated operations camp, CDF called upon researchers from the San Diego Supercomputer Center and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, both at the University of
California, San Diego, and San Diego State University (SDSU), all
collaborators on a project known as the High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN).
Researchers arrived at the wildfire scene within hours to deploy a high-speed wireless link. This invisible lifeline carried information more than 70 miles from the San Diego Supercomputer Center
to the emergency crews. With the wireless access, firefighters were able to receive weather data and other intelligence in real time and send incident
information to the state's emergency response agencies.
Since 2003, HPWREN has supported several major California fire responses, including the Eagle Fire of May 2004 and the Mataguay Fire of July 2004. The Eagle Fire response was the team's first nighttime, ad-hoc deployment of communications for emergency support.
Meanwhile, researchers are continually developing new methods and devices, including a real-time early warning system to alert firefighters to dry, dangerous weather conditions and a new procedure for helicopter-based deployment of an ad-hoc data-communications relay site.
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