Emergency crews have a new and improved approach to firefighting. NBC 7’s Amber Frias takes a look at all that has changed in the last two decades.
The Cedar Fire that charred a path across San Diego County 20 years ago has left an imprint on our county and taught officials valuable lessons on how to prepare for future disasters.
Ray Chaney remembers the day vividly.
“I was getting ready for dinner with a family, and I grabbed an apple and a soda, and thought I'd be back in an hour because there were no Santa Ana winds and came home three days later,” said Chaney, director of 211 San Diego.
The Santa Ana winds picked up, though, and what started as a signal fire soon escalated into a hellish inferno for the then Cal Fire battalion chief.
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“The fire came out of the San Diego River drainage,” Chaney said. “It hit the backside of that mountain, and much like a boulder does in a river, the water goes around the boulder — well, the fire did the same thing.“It wrapped around the mountain and split the fire into two directions.”
Regulations at the time prevented firefighting helicopters from making drops at night. Making matters even worse: There were no phone or digital warning systems back then.
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“It caught a lot of people by surprise,” said Chaney. "It was almost 1 a.m. and you have this fire traveling so fast."
Fifteen people died and more than 2,800 homes and businesses were destroyed.
“There are some horrible things that happened during the Cedar Fire, but there are some great outcomes as well,” Chaney said.
Chaney helped work out deals between fire departments and law enforcement agencies, relationships that don’t usually exist in other counties.
“We do this so often in San Diego County that we get good at it,” Chaney said, talking about battling wildfires. “So we exercise the system and we practice the relationships, we practice the response.”
San Diego County is also one of the few places that can call nearby military bases and instantly get their helicopters to make drops.
“So I would say it's an all-hands effort and pretty much anybody involved in the response of wildland firefighting in San Diego County, we were all working as one,” said Chaney.
The work isn’t done: Technology is now helping firefighters track a fire’s path and learn about it much sooner.
“We've built this platform for first-responders so they can move the cameras, they can look at the AI, and they can look at anomalies, things that have changed,” said Neal Driscoll, UC San Diego professor and founder of AlertCalifornia.
AlertCalifornia detects and tracks fires across 1,000 AI-equipped cameras across the state.
“Early confirmation is where we have the best bet of being on the offensive and being safe,” Driscoll said. “So now with this network, we can assess the size of the fire, and how fast it's growing and what's the response.”
Reverse 911, which sends information to anyone who signed up, was also another creation borne from the Cedar Fire
“So the technology from then to now is night and day,” Chaney said.
But even with all the changes, Chaney wants us to keep our guard up.
“There's nothing even today with all the technology and relationships we have and all the resources we have, whether it's air or ground, that's going to stop the Santa Ana-driven fire,” Chaney said. “So it's really incumbent for the public not to forget that. Don't become complacent”
