Extreme Endeavors

There are currently over 3.7 million total square miles total in the United States, approximately one-third of which is forested.  This is a significant amount of territory to attempt fire detection.   Fire departments in cities and towns have shown tremendous benefit from establishing fire protection and alarm systems. This proves that the sooner a fire is reported, the quicker and easier it will be to extinguish.  The fact that it is far easier to extinguish a small fire opposed to a fully engulfed fire remains the same in a municipality as it does in a wild lands region; however, the detection, response and management of the two types of fires are completely different.  In the wilderness environment it is impossible to hang a smoke detector on every tree and response can be very difficult due to the distances and terrain.  The moment a report of a wild land fire comes in, a number of key questions need to be answered in order to initiate a suppression strategy: What is the location, how accessible is the location, and what is the size and category of the fire?

Great strides have been made in combating wild land fires, from the development of the incident command system in the 70’s, to using satellites in space. The industry is undergoing change due to technological advances; however, the ability to confidently state that a fire started at location ‘X,’ 10 minutes ago has not yet been achievable.

Extreme Endeavors is developing a fire detector that consists of an array of sensors that ‘listens’ for a fire. From this system, we can create a detection scheme that will sense a fire from a hundred miles away and provide information, including, but not limited to, the location, and size of the fire in a much more rapid and efficient method than current methods.