EL CAJON, Calif. (KGTV) – An unassuming tan building in El Cajon is home to new Cal Fire San Diego technology.
“So, we’ve had it about five months. The crews have finally gotten used to it,” Cpt. Mike Cornette of Cal Fire San Diego said.
The new tech is the Haivision Video Wall at the Cal Fire San Diego’s headquarters. In total, the El Cajon facility's dispatch center has 13 new screen.
“We’re using it on every wildland fire in the County,” said Cornette.
Cornette told ABC 10News it’s funded from a grant in partnership with AlertCalifornia, UCSD and Cal Fire.
“It’s a valuable new technology that we’re able to use to take all of our different intelligence products that we have- fire modeling software, some of the camera feeds through the Alert California system - and broadcast that to the entire dispatch center,” Cornette said.
He said this allows everyone to get on the same page of what’s going on at a scene.
It can also better prepare crews for what they’re responding to.
“We relied before on the first engine company getting on scene and reporting their report on condition and telling us what was going on,” Cornette said. “Now we have the ability to have the dispatch captain in this command center to be able to look at the column, look at our modeling software and make some decisions on it; whether we need to increase our response or change our different tactics.”
The tech helps in situations like we saw on Friday with the Garden Fire in Fallbrook.
“That gives us better situational awareness on where we think this fire is to make sure the 911 calls we’re getting are coinciding with that location we’ve determined. And then we’re able to augment the response. So, we’re able to add those additional engines, dozers, hand crews, aircraft if needed to try to keep these fires as small as possible,” Cornette said.
Cal Fire said there are more possibilities for the use of the video wall than just wildfires.
“We can use it for HazMat incidents. We can use it for storms and flooding; just wildfires is the tip of the iceberg,” Cornette said.
