"A Technological Edge on Wildfires"

Recently, wildfires have been violently raging throughout the United States. The most important aspect of dealing with wildfires is keeping them from reaching a catastrophic level. Firefighters need to depend on their eyesight and instincts to alert them of danger, but sometimes raging wildfires can take uncontrollable and unexpected sharp turns, as seen in the deaths of the 19 elite firefighters in Arizona. As global warming and parched western forests, especially in the summer, raise the likelihood of fires, it becomes more difficult to prevent them from developing into catastrophic issues. Therefore, officials and experts are looking towards technological solutions to the rising wildfire issue. The Unites States Forest Service plans on attempting to solve the issue of disastrous wildfires by utilizing computer simulations that set tens of thousands of virtual wildfires, employing varying weather patterns, topography, vegetation, and taking into account past weather patterns. By stimulating wildfires using various factors, experts can get a better portrayal of the probability of fire occurrence. The Forest Service also manages 193 million acres of forestland, thinning out the undergrowth in two to three million acres per year and through controlled burning or even goats. Other solutions include using satellites to track thunderstorms and the winds that accompany them, images from the satellites can be beamed to ipads and smart phones that are easily accessed by firefighters. The biggest barrier to technological solutions is that there are often no cell phone towers or internet connectivity in the middle of burning down forests. So despite attempts to utilize unmanned, remote control aircrafts that can fly over flames for hours at a time sending back infrared photos depicting the fire’s shifting edges, with no cell phone towers or internet connectivity firefighters are still ill-informed and fires remain essentially unpredictable. Another barrier includes the inevitably unpredictable nature of wildfires and a lack of complete knowledge about fires. Despite stimulating them, there is never a guarantee that a wildfire will or will not occur regardless of past weather patterns and gusty storm winds. Also, currently for larger fires, aircrafts with infrared sensors fly over the fires at night, producing a map of the fire first thing in the morning and updates throughout the day are based on incomplete data and visual reports. Personally, I think that technological solutions will decrease the occurrence of uncontrollable, catastrophic wildfires, but unfortunately will not completely prevent unpredictable tragedy. Luckily, the Forest Service is working on setting up mobile cell phone towers and “mesh networks” which allow crew members to share information even if internet connection is lost. Certainly with new and improved technology experts and firefighters can vastly diminish the probability of catastrophic wildfires and better control and prevent most of them in the future.  
Link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/science/getting-an-edge-on-wildfires.html?ref=science&_r=0