Wildfire mitigation

Recently on Capitol Hill a frank statement from the U.S. Forest Service second in command Christopher French. We do not have enough resources or capacity to address the needs in front of us right now. French told that to a Senate subcommittee that on the fire suppression side, We are losing a number of our skilled wildfire specialists to other agencies

While climate change is ramping up the numbers and severity of wildfires, the folks who deal with those fires are ramping up the use of technology to help them do a better job. It's been a game changer for us this year.

Christopher French, deputy chief of the U.S. Forest Service, telling a Senate subcommittee hearing this week that newly available remote camera and satellite imaging systems are helping first on the fire prevention side of things helping with doing prescribed burning operations, he says. With this technology, we're able to much better predict when and how to do those fires in ways that have less impacts to communities and people. And the French says on the firefighting front. Speaker2: We're putting teams specifically with each incident management team that are specifically using satellite technology, other technology that we have right now to predict better informing tactics that we have and how we do things. So it's been significant. Helping deploy resources more effectively boosting firefighter safety. But while the U.S. Forest Service is losing some human resources, it is finding some wildfire mitigation in the form of technology.