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New wildfire detection camera installed on Pole Mountain, Sonoma Coast’s highest peak

New wildfire detection camera installed on Pole Mountain, Sonoma Coast’s highest peak

The scene shifts every 15 seconds on a large computer screen at REDCOM’s emergency dispatch hub in Santa Rosa, displaying a 360-degree view of the coastal hills from the highest point on the Sonoma Coast.

The images come courtesy of a newly all-hours camera atop Pole Mountain, site of a longtime fire lookout used for decades to spot wildfires in some of Sonoma County’s most remote locations.

Only now, instead of a person armed with a spotting scope and radio, the first indication of a fire in the area may well be transmitted by the new camera — the only one in the county that automatically rotates on its axis, providing full coverage of the coastal hills in 30-degree arcs.

Part of a growing network of wildfire detection cameras deployed around the North Bay and the state, the newest addition is representative of continuing investments in state-of-the-art technology deemed key to defending the west against increasingly frequent, more destructive wildfires.

It expands on technological capabilities that fire officials say already have aided in the discovery, location and assessment of wildfires since such equipment began proliferating several years ago.

“It’s a great tool for all of us,” Monte Rio Fire Chief Steve Baxman said. “It’s one of the better things that’s happened out here in a long time.”

Sonoma County now has 12 cameras at 13 sites, a small fraction of the 220 or so already installed around California, with scores more still on the drawing board amid ongoing efforts by Cal Fire and PG&E to address growing wildfire risk.

Several other cameras are located right at the eastern edge of the county but provide moment-to-moment pictures of territory inside county lines. The images are made public at ALERTWildfire.org.

All the cameras provide high-definition and near-infrared capability that can capture images at night, and allow authorized users, including REDCOM and CalFire personnel, to log in and manipulate the cameras, zooming in or manually rotating those that don’t move automatically so they can better see and locate smoke plumes.

What’s missing are the people or even artificial intelligence units dedicated to monitoring the images sent by the cameras around the clock during the most fire-prone parts of the year.


Cal Fire Battalion Chief Ben Nicholls said he’s aware of a rising number of civilians and retired and off-duty firefighters who regularly check out the camera feed to see what’s going on around them, just out of personal interest.

At this point, he said, a fire is still most likely to be reported by someone who sees the smoke or flames first hand. But the cameras play an important role in helping officials understand where it’s burning, how it might behave, and how it might best be attacked.

University of Nevada geophysicist Graham Kent originally developed the high-definition, pan-tilt-zoom cameras and communication links that form the foundation of ALERTWildfire, formed by a consortium of three universities: UNR, UC San Diego and the University of Oregon.

The group, which launched its work in the Lake Tahoe, San Diego and Orange County areas, has about 270 cameras installed across five western states. Almost 200 were installed just this year, Kent said.

Though it’s exhausting work at the pace they’re going, the quickly expanding network of private and public partners makes it as thrilling, he said.

“It’s probably 2- or 3,000 people pushing in the same direction,” said Kent, director of the Nevada Seismology Lab. “That’s really cool… It’s not a political thing. It’s not a blue or red thing. Everybody gets it, so we’re grateful that we’re getting a lot of help. We need it.”


The cameras a part of a new emphasis on technology embraced by Gov. Gavin Newsom and others in the effort to address growing wildfire risks. They also invite the public to play an active role in fire detection.

In Orange County, for instance, over 100 volunteers already are on the rolls, ready and willing to monitor camera feeds during high-fire conditions so fire crews are given notice at the first sign of smoke, Kent said.

Early warnings mean smarter deployment of resources, more timely evacuations and more likely suppression of wildfires before they get out of control.

The camera feeds allowed Baxman to monitor a recent July 13 fire in the Shiloh Estates near the Mark West Creek area between Windsor and Santa Rosa and see that crews quickly knocked down a 2.6-acre brush fire that ignited in a rugged canyon in hot dry conditions.

“Any time I hear a smoke check anywhere in the county, I can just go to the computer, pull it up and look,” he said.

The same holds true for fire and medical dispatchers at the county’s REDCOM dispatch center, where ALERTWildfire.org is among the dominant sites on a wall of large computer screens that can be observed by all the dispatchers in the room at any given time.

“It happens pretty routinely now, where we get a call from the valley floor, ‘I see smoke,’ and then we can pull it up,” said KT McNulty operations manager for the agency, the Redwood Empire Dispatch Communications Authority.

Last October, a camera installed about two weeks earlier on Geyser Peak helped Cal Fire crews pinpoint a column of smoke reported minutes earlier near Geyserville by a motorist traveling on Highway 101.

Sonoma Water spent nearly $500,000 to install the first round of eight fire-detection cameras late last year and fund their operation for the first year to protect the Lake Sonoma watershed, which provides drinking water for some 600,000 customers in Sonoma and northern Marin counties.

PG&E has paid for four cameras so far in Sonoma County, including a fixed camera at Pole Mountain erected a couple of seasons ago and, last week, the automatically rotating one, as well as cameras on Sonoma Mountain and Sleepy Mountain, south of Sonoma.

The utility plans to install 100 cameras in high fire risk areas across its territory this year and so far has completed 25, spokeswoman Deanna Contreras said.

Cal Fire, meanwhile, has plans for 100 installations this year, a $5.2 million project.

Pole Mountain, which reaches to 2,204 feet, hosted the last of Sonoma County’s lookout towers, a wooden structure moved there in 1981 after 14 years at its original site on Red Oat Mountain. In 2017, after years of wear and tear exposed to the elements, it was taken out of service.

An effort to raise an initial $100,000 to take down the old tower and build a new, steel version is under way, with hopes of beginning construction next year, said John Lester, president of the Pole Mountain Lookout board.

“I’m all for high-tech and everything like that,” said Lester, who owns a small broadband communications company, “but having the human intelligence at the site is ideal. It’s all about the first minutes. We want to have the only remaining lookout that has both humans and high-tech.”