A new Information Assessment and Awareness Aircraft (IAA) is now stationed at Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos as another groundbreaking strategic partnership with Orange County Fire Authority to combat wildfires in the state.
The specially outfitted Beechcraft King-Air is filled with high-tech equipment able to transmit real time images and video to firefighters on the ground, said Fred W. Burris, Air Tactical Group Supervisor for the OCFA.
Burris said there are two IAA aircraft in the fleet, with one stationed in Sacramento for NorCal and the one now stationed at JFTB in Los Alamitos.
What’s different about this plane, said Burris, is the connected “platform” that gives OCFA the ability to transmit real time images, and video to firefighters on the ground as a bevy of instruments also model wildfires and automatically generate perimeter imagery.
“The livestream gives our people on the ground immediate access to data,” said Burris. The system uses geostationary satellites and routes the data through a “Fusion Center” based at UC San Diego before pushing it out through the platform.
Firefighters can download apps to allow them access to the data, said Burris, while the more likely scenario is that a duty officer can monitor the livestream, edit it, narrate it and then give firefighters the ability to see and hear events around the fire they are fighting.
“The sensors (on the plane) can see through the smoke,” he added. This not only gives firefighters the ability to stay in direct communication with tactical and strategic elements, said Burris, but “provides them with video context as well.”
He said pilots stay on stand-by so the plane can literally be airborne within a very short window to provide firefighters with “real time incident mapping” and other data they need. The imagining and sensory equipment can not only provide near real time data but can also calculate windspeeds and other environmental conditions to model an ongoing wildfire.
Burris said the general public will not have access to the data, afraid that the limited data platform would “quickly be overwhelmed” by the public. He said the data would however be shared with the news media. “They can do a much better job of informing the public,” he said.
The program is funded by the California Office of Emergency Services and administered by the Orange County Fire Authority. It is available to any agency or jurisdiction in California, said Burris.
