Wildland Urban Interface Conference
RedZone was pleased to take part in the annual Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) Conference held at the Peppermill Resort in Reno, Nevada, during the week of March 20, 2017. Each year this event, hosted by The International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), offers invaluable hands-on training and interactive sessions designed to address the various challenges presented by wildland fire.
During this year’s WUI conference, RedZone had the honor of meeting fire representatives from Local, State, Federal and International agencies such as the Texas Forest Service, Australian Fire Ministry, USFS, Cal Fire and Cedar City Fire Department. An exhibit hall allowed vendors the opportunity to showcase new products and spend valuable time with prospective clients. Some vendors in attendance included Spiedr Spinkler, Simtable, Mtech, Boise Mobile Equipment, Supply Cache and National Firefighter.
Wildfire Scores
RedZone’s revamped booth highlighted our new product wildfirescores.com. The product allows homeowners, insurance underwriters, fire officials and real estate professionals to see how frequently fires occur near a property and how severe a fire would be if one were to occur. We happily shared how Wildfirescores.com uses state-of-the-art software modeling to analyze local vegetation, weather and topography data in order to generate predictions of fire behavior.
WUI Conference Keynote Speaches
Attendees were able to listen to keynote speeches on subjects including: communities regularly being built within the urban interface, firefighter health, leadership and general sessions focused on past events. 2016’s largest and one of its most destructive events was the Fort McMurray Fire from May in Alberta, Canada. The evacuation of 88,000 people with one escape route was quite the tale. RedZone also attended SDG&E’s presentation that highlighted their weather supercomputer. The computer is being used to predict wildfire using a sophisticated weather model that has proven effective for Southern California, especially for Santa Ana Wind Event Fires.
Every year it is exciting to see the WUI conference bring together fire experts from around the world. We are happy to be a part of that collaborative effort to better protect communities from wildfire and we look forward to next year’s WUI conference.
