San Diego County Sends Firefighters North

Our top story, we may complain about San Diego's unusually humid summer but so far, it's hopeless avoid the tinderbox conditions in northern California. Carson 20 wildfires burning around the state, the biggest blaze is the Rocky fire. It has burned almost 70,000 acres in for -- forecasters say more lightning is expected in the area. Firefighters from San Diego are helping work those fires but they are also monitoring probes down here and working to educate the public on the dangers of flying drones over fires. Experts at the biz lab in San Diego state are working with an interactive tool that may help firefighters plot the fat -- path a feature wildfires. Joining us today we have Kendal Bortisser, fire captain, Cal Fire San Diego. What are the latest stats? The fire is 70,000 acres with 40% contained. Last few days have been going the containment numbers are going up. The ultimate goal is to get a line around it and put it out. I don't have a number exactly. I know they're still and decorations in effect but don't have a total number one homes destroyed. The Rocky fire is slowly becoming contained has jumped highways and fire lance. What has made this a fire so difficult to contain? Firefighters are seeing extreme and firefighter behavior, steam train, volatile fuels, high temperatures. The multiyear drought is a tremendous factor. Everything is stacked against them. Lack of precipitation, it's a real challenge for the firefighters up and down the state, many of these fires are doing with the same elements. There is also really warm temperatures in that area. Yes. Many days are over 100°. You combine that with low relative humidity, steep terrain, dry fuels, not to mention last week they got canceled for firefighters statewide, many have been on the rise for two or three weeks. I read this more lightning in the forecast, what does that mean to firefighters? The biggest challenge with that, is many of these lightning storms come through. They have little or no precipitation affiliated with them. You get lightning in these tinderbox areas answer recipe for disaster. We see many areas where there's a multiple lightning strikes that cause multiple fires. We have to have personnel on every one of these to ensure the fire gets out. In many cases, it takes days to hike in and ensure the fires are out. Mother nature is stacked against us right now. As you mentioned, there are a lot of fires burning around California. Are any almost as dangerous as the Rocky fire? Are they growing the way the Rocky fire has? I don't believe any are seeing the conditions like Rocky. All of them takes the link of an eye and conditions can change. Wins with up, the drought is in effect all over the state, the fuels are dry. If we get winds coming up, that's going to have a serious impact on any of these fires are burning. Susan a memorial service today for one firefighter killed last weekend in the Modoc national Forest. Have there been other injuries? Just been multiple injuries up and down the state. Firefighting is an inherently dangerous profession. Is extremely unfortunate, our hearts go out to the bonfire -- firefighters. That affects us no matter where you are. It has a huge impact on us. We're just wishing for the best the family and the forest service Whizzes and above which average number for California? Yes. We are seeing fire to be over a five-year average double of what it normally would be. Just this year compared to last year, almost 1500 fires more statewide then we saw last time last year. In addition, acreage has doubled as well. This is having a huge impact in many different ways. Governor. Jerry Brown will be meeting today about the many wildfires burning around the state. What additional resources if any to think the states could deploy against these fires? We're seeing the National Guard mobilized. The air tankers are being utilized. National Guard troops have been trained up to be used as firefighters on the front lines as needed. Certainly, will be calling for resources wherever they are available whether that be out of states, or continue to utilize resources as they become available in California. Let's not forget, there are other states near as they are also having pretty huge fire season as well. Thank you for the update. I've been speaking with Cal fire Captain. Kendall Ortiz. Thank you for joining us. Joining me now, Brian Fennessy, assistant fire chief, San Diego Fire-Rescue how many San Diego firefighters are fighting the fire? From the region, I just spoke with the old area coordinator fire chief Kenny fire, he shared we have a total of eight strike teams so 160 people assigned to 40 engines that are in northern California. That's not to include the miscellaneous overhead, this resource people. With about 200 firefighters all told in northern California at this point. Does that leave us here in San Diego vulnerable? It doesn't. For all the local government departments, you're backfilling behind those people the same day or the very next day. Some of the lessons we learned is we need to have that surge capacity. We went from having maybe a dozen engines on reserve to 32. It really hasn't affected our ability to respond to new fires here in San Diego. As we heard from Captain. Ortiz, a lot of these people have been on the scene for quite some time, do they get rotated out? Other people coming back to San Diego and others sent up North, is that how it works? That's a good question. The last few days we have been working with our other local government partners and we're swapping out crews. Tomorrow, just within the marches on, will be putting in advance, replacements for at least 10 of those engines, sending them North and bring our people down. Every 14 days, we swapped out. We may extend to 21 days. We haven't seen a major outbreak of fires down here. Our fire season doesn't peak until the fall. If you can, remind us of the dangers fire conditions here in San Diego. Historically, we suffer our worst loss during the fall months. We've been really lucky in terms of experiencing this tropical flow we have. Humidity has been up because it won't take but a day or two of dry weather to where were going to be experiencing much of what they are expecting in northern California. Fire season is still in front of us. We're very concerned, historically the parties will shift South in September, we've long fire season ahead of us. Just a quick question, there were reports that a drone was flying around up fire this week at case in which is in Linda Vista. Did interfere with fighting that fire? I talked with the commander this morning. He mentioned that Sharon an immediate attention. He shared with me it didn't really interfere with their operation at all, it could have, had been lower. Primarily we are seeing the greatest interference in these while than fires when we have other aircraft up in five. Had this been a large structure fire, it could have interfered. That fire specifically, there is no difference. I'm going to ask what you think about the San Diego County supervisors voted to support whatever state or federal penalties for drone operators who interfere with fires. Is is a growing thing? Do think we'll see state legislation against drones soon that interfere in emergency situations. I think we will. It's getting a lot of attention locally and nationally. It will only take one instance when aircraft runs into a drone, and got. Kills anybody to really -- get people's attention. The problem seems to be getting worse, not enter. Common sense does not seem to be prevailing in these cases. And then ask our guests stay with us. We also have Eric Frost, director, San Diego State University's VizCenter. He's going to give us a preview of new software. As I understand, this tool, it's a device for map is projected on a powder filled sandbox. That can be shaped into the topography of a specific area. Can you give us an idea of how using this model can make a map of how the fire will? Yes. That's a good general description. They can look at some tabletop calm and see a bunch of YouTube videos about it. There aren't any videos about the extraordinary new rendition. A common way people look at imagery and animation, would be on the screen, this is taking the screen, instead of showing on the wall, short on a three-dimensional model of the typography. You make the sand -- it's not actually sent. It's grand up on the shelves. The power is much like sand, you can see the files projected down on a real three-dimensional objects and because fire oftentimes is so profoundly driven by topography, you can see how as the fires moving, you have the computation of the real wire model that's a normal one used by the Forest Service, CC really but the fire is actually doing. Then you can go play back a real fire, when you see it, you absolutely see the extraordinary role the topography has. The flames are going up, the land is Steve sickos faster. You see how the wind and the topography can interact with each other. The biggest thing most come away from is inking my goodness firefighters are very courageous people. You realize extraordinary challenge it really is. We really come away thinking firefighters are incredible people. Is this table being used right now in any real fire situation? The company is in New Mexico. About 65 are out and deployed. Mostar in real fire command centers. It is being used.We have San Diego state, was purchased for us by the local professional group. Police for teaching students and as a studio you can use your phone or iPad to take a video of it and put it up on YouTube and send it out via Twitter. It mimics how do you also display social media on top of it? So somebody is looking at twitter Instagram, when you look at those on topography, you can see these people see different things. E make sense out of social media. In San Diego go, we have this unique topography, all of a sudden social media dramatically makes sense. It as a whole another dimension to the information. Now it's taking pictures of a fire. Unlike the 2007 fire, when the protocol at the beginning of the fire was we put out a fire permanent map and cut down was done every four hours. You can really take the magnitude of thousands of pictures that are becoming out every hour. From a fire the people are taking the pictures. You can put this together and because of taken from different perspectives, you can make a three-dimensional model out of it. That's part of what the table does as well. It combines all the pictures, make some all, does that on top of the sand. Were going to be talking more about this in an upcoming show. Going to and it's here. Really want to thank my guests Kendal Bortisser, fire captain, Cal Fire San Diego Brian Fennessy, assistant fire chief, San Diego Fire-Rescue Eric Frost, director, San Diego State University's VizCenter thank you very much.