New technology helps Travis County crews get ahead of wildfires

TRAVIS COUNTY, Texas - Wildfires can spread fast, especially on days considered critically dry, but fire crews across Travis County are using new technology to get ahead of a fire before it even starts.

Fire crews were out Wednesday morning pulling hose and drilling what they needed to do, just in case. It’s the kind of preparation firefighters do before the first flame ever shows up. Now, they are preparing in a completely different way, too.

How are Travis County firefighters preparing for wildfires?

What they're saying:

"Where do we need to focus our time and energy on a particular day?" Travis County Fire Rescue Chief Ken Bailey said.

The answer now is shown on the computer. Travis County Fire Rescue is using a wildfire modeling tool that takes weather, topography, and vegetation, and turns the data into a picture of what a fire could do.

"It's not a watch, it's more like a sundial and so it allows us to focus on some areas and then we can pre-plan those areas," Chief Bailey said.

It does not tell them where a fire will happen, but it shows where conditions could make one especially dangerous.

"What we see here is in the red areas this is where our larger fires would occur and the blue areas those would be smaller fires," Chief Bailey said, showing the model to FOX 7 reporter Meredith Aldis.

The picture lets them look beyond the flames, to the homes and neighborhoods in their path and where to send resources.

"We can look at those and see, do we have access issues to those, what are our water supply issues, are aircraft going to be useful what's the fuel type in those areas, so it just gives us a little bit of situational awareness that we wouldn't have otherwise," Chief Bailey said.

He said it also helps them decide whether people need to get out.

"Should we shelter certain people in place? Because when we put people on the road, you've got the normal people on the road and now you've got a lot of these people on a road, but more importantly, we're trying to bring resources in to mitigate this event and so evacuation is not always the answer. This allows us to kind of plan for that," Chief Bailey said.

What you can do:

Firefighters said everyone has a role in stopping a wildfire before it ever gets going.

"Illegally burning is number one. The second piece of that is making sure if you're hauling something. I can't tell you how many fires we get from people dragging something down the road. If you can make sure that that's secured, it would reduce the number of fires that we have," Chief Bailey said.

By the numbers:

The Texas A&M Forest Service reported responding to more than 70 wildfires statewide in the past week.