PORTLAND, Ore. — A San Francisco-based tech company has been partnering with T-Mobile for the past couple years to help fight wildfires in the Pacific Northwest and beyond.
While Oregon's wildfire season has stayed fairly quiet for most of this past summer, things really took off by August and early September. And with climate change, researchers predict wildfires will only get worse over time.
“We have to find new ways to fight wildfires. Things are getting worse by the year as weather changes," said T-Mobile spokesperson John Saw.
In 2020, the Seattle-area-based wireless carrier teamed Pano AI, a company that uses high-definition cameras and T-Mobile’s 5G service to detect wildfires.
The company's cameras have been installed on cell phone towers, and they use T-Mobile’s 5G service to detect wildfires from miles away. They're already installed in five states, including Oregon, California, Idaho and Montana.
“Pano launched in 2020 when California was going through a horrible wildfire season in the state’s history as well as Oregon and other regions across the country," said Pano CEO Sonia Kastner.
Kastner said the cameras are constantly scanning over the Portland metro area and through parts of the Willamette Valley.
“We rotate cameras 360 degrees, so we are refreshing a panoramic view every minute, then we run artificial intelligence to look for the first wisps of smoke at all times,” said Kastner.
If a fire is detected, the technology is designed to pinpoint the location of the fire. Emergency responders are then alerted, and they can look at the video in real time.
Kastner said local fire chiefs have told them this technology has become a powerful tool for fighting wildfires.
Portland General Electric is also part of this partnership.