Fire scientist attempts to predict wildfire threats
Amid a devastating drought, record-breaking heat and the everlasting breezy Santa Ana winds, Tom Rolinski is hoping his team is prepared for yet another fire season.
"The bad news here is because we haven't had a lot of precipitation since the beginning of January things have really dried out," he said.
Rolinksi is a fire scientist with Southern California Edison and leads the effort to more accurately predict the threat of wildfires in the utility's highest risk areas.
"We're doing all this modeling," said Rolinski. "We're modeling the atmosphere. We're modeling the fuel conditions plus we've got over a thousand weather stations over 100 high-[definition] cameras."
The laundry list of available tools helps Rolinski and his team reduce the number of homes getting their power shut off in wildfire conditions.
"If we have to de-energize it, we may only have to de-energize part of a circuit," Rolinksi said.
This new effort is a welcomed surprise to homeowners in at-risk neighborhoods.
"That actually sounds pretty cool," said homeowner Anthony Dominguez.
Domingez said he hopes this new approach works for his Santa Clarita neighborhood after he claims his home went dark four or five times during strong winds. He also said that his neighbors never had their power shut off.
"I asked people who work on the power lines and they're always like 'Oh that's just how the grid is," said Dominguez.
The energy company has focused a vast amount of resources on covering overhead conductors to reduce the risk of wildfires. In other areas, they have installed switchers to isolate the parts of a high-risk neighborhood.
"If a fire starts in a particular part of our service area we can see where it's going to spread," said Rolinski. "How quickly it's going to spread, how intense it will be and what the impact be to those particular communities."
