Presdient Brian Sandoval:
Incredibly important to have both Senator Cortez Masto and Senator Rosen here on campus. Senator Cortez Masto was here to learn about our ALERTWildfire system. It's a first detection system cameras.
We have over 600 cameras throughout Nevada and California. And it really allows for first responders to get there sooner, and it also allows for the firefighters to be more strategic with regard to how they fight the fires. Senator Cortez Masto is sponsoring legislation to allow more funding that would bring more cameras to the system.
Graham Kent, Ph.D.:
This is the Caldor fire a few days ago/ Let me just go in and do the time lapse here from our Leak Springs camera. There's tornadatic spin. You'll see rotation down here, but the larger fire was rotating like this. So it was almost like they were calling it a supercell.
This is the worst fire behavior we've seen in 47 years. The great thing about having this asset is – what this is telling you is you're moving people away. You're not going to basically be able to fight this at this time.
You're trying to get your firefighters out. Your evacuations out. We're looking – and we'll see in a minute – to put a thermal camera. FLIR camera on Scout Peak.
So the scenario here is that this is likely to work its way up along the I-50 corridor. And so we want to be able to have the best opportunity to forewarn the greater Tahoe Basin. Some of this new technology, like the artificial intelligence, may allow us to get on top of some fires in terms of detection early.
The FLIR infrared or thermal cameras are more like when we have these really bad campaign fires where it's smoked out that we're actually able to see through the smoke. And essentially, at that point, be able to make better decisions.
This is kinda a momentous day for the lab, but it's also the timing. What we're looking at here is that we're having a real tough go in 2021. And one of the things I always like to tell people is that it's not like fighting a war. It's fighting a war.
One of five cameras that we lost last year during the fire siege in California 2020. This was the camera that caught this picture here. In the last week, we have burned over 10 more cameras, but they didn't melt. As a nation, we have to find a better way to scale to the problem at hand. And obviously having the three senators here today and President Sandoval, it will hopefully help us get to that level where we can scale up
and really attack this problem.
Senator Jacky Rosen:
Here, when our universities, like UNR, are on the leading edge, not just what we're here today to talk about wildfires, earthquakes, natural disasters. How we make sure that we have good healthcare here. I've been here to talk with veterans in the past, DACA students. We have so many things going on and it is important to the emotional health, workforce development, all of that to our state.
Senator Catherine Cortez Masto:
I am so excited to always come back to campus. It has grown, but it is an essential part of what we see here in Nevada and across the country. I am here right now talking about wildfires and the technology that we are using to fight and identify these fires. The ALERTWildfire cameras. It's exciting because it's my alma mater
and were actually contributing to really this new technology, and it's going to help us suppress and fight these wildfires at the end of the day.
That's why it's important for the funding. There's about $3.4 billion dollars in this bipartisan infrastructure package that I fought for and another $10 million just to address the needs for this new technology and research.
