By Angie Valencia-Martinez
The Daily News of Los Angeles
Copyright 2006 Tower Media, Inc.
VAN NUYS AIRPORT, Calif. — When the Santa Anas fan blazes across Southern California this fire season, one firefighter who narrowly escaped death in a helicopter crash will be flying high over the flames to help save lives and property.
Using a method he helped develop after recovering from his accident, Steven Robinson of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s aerial program, can map a fire in progress and provide vital information, including evacuation routes and other emergency plans, to ground crews.
“I am able to predict where a fire is moving and how fast without putting fire crews in danger,” the 40-year-old pilot said. “This is an ongoing process that we’re developing further and further. It puts information at your fingertips quickly.”
The Thousand Oaks man spearheaded the cutting-edge computer mapping program in the department following his near fatal 1998 crash. He was piloting the helicopter that was rushing an 11-year-old car crash victim to the hospital when the chopper’s tail rotor broke off, killing the girl, two paramedics and a helicopter crew member. A lawsuit against the helicopter company was settled last month.
After nearly two years of rehab, he returned to the Fire Department determined to return to Air Operations. Since 2001, however, he has been unable to fly because of head injuries sustained in the accident. He can still co-pilot.
Wanting to feel useful while on restricted duty, the desk-bound pilot teamed with ESRI, a Redlands-based company that specializes in geographic information systems, or GIS, software.
“I didn’t want to retire,” he said. “I worked so hard to get here. I saw this as an opportunity to deliver a new program.”
The public-private partnership eventually included Hewlett-Packard. The two companies went on to donate more than $300,000 worth of computers, servers and software and also provided the training.
The end result: interactive computerized mapping that displays layer upon layer of information about a fire’s size, census data, topography, weather, location of nearby homes and population, hospitals, schools and more.
The mapping is built on high-resolution images captured by an aircraft. The data are overlaid on the pictures, and users can zoom in and out for a more detailed picture.
The mapping software, used during last year’s Topanga Fire, which burned more than 24,000 acres in Ventura and Los Angeles counties, accurately predicted when it was time to evacuate the residents of Oak Park.
“I said, `The fire is moving at such and such speed and will hit Oak Park at such and such time,”’ Robinson said.
The downside to the current technology is that Robinson must log on to a server to acquire the information, which means he has to fly back to the office at Van Nuys Airport, print the maps and drive them back to the command post.
He is now working on acquiring a $600,000 high-tech mobile command truck that can download his maps and display them on screen.
“Time is critical,” he said. “When we have to make decisions on the fly, we can’t be waiting to get data out. It needs to be as current as possible.”
GIS mapping is just one example of the technologically advanced equipment firefighters are using, and will put to more use as fire season heats up.
“It allows our companies on the ground to get ready to fight the fire when it’s headed on a specific direction,” helicopter pilot Phil Clark said. “This tool is of great value. It speeds up evacuations. You can see where it’s heading, potentially saving the lives of animals and people and homes.”
Air Operations recently acquired a $1 million high-definition camera for one of their fire helicopters, fully operational with high-definition and thermal images that can capture latitude-longitude coordinates along with fire progressions from the camera lens. Robinson said he believes it’s the first camera of its type in civilian service.
“Technology is woven throughout the department,” said Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey. “Firefighters are more well-informed than ever.”