Getting Ahead of Fire Risk

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by Jacob Solomon Nov 30, 2022 News
Getting Ahead of Fire Risk

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The smoke from the Shedhorn Fire was detected by a camera at the top of Lone Mountain, 13 miles away. It may have saved houses and lives in the West because of the recent installation of a camera that was a pilot program for a new technology.

One of the top 10 privately held insurance brokerage firms in the country who serves the Big Sky community has embraced this technology as a part of their strategy to mitigate risk. Smoke can be detected and triangulated with the help of the T-Mobile 5G network.

Jeff Kaplan is the senior VP vice president at Risk Strategies. The ability to detect fires early on helps protect properties and people in the Big Sky area.

A system of cameras with 30x tactical zoom is used by the company.

An alert is sent back to the intelligence center, where experts analyze the data, determine if it is a fire incident, and notify the fire department. It allows for early detection so that resources can be dispatched quickly.

The Shedhorn Fire was contained with the help of air crews, 41 firefighters and two 20-person hand crews. They support the efforts of the cameras because it caused no damage to the surrounding homes or structures and it took a long time to respond.

Risk Strategies was founded in 1997 and has grown into a specialty insurance broker with a team of experts. They are proud of applying their expertise to the community here in southwest Montana. They know that they can engineer buildings to resist hurricanes, floods and other disasters. It doesn't mean that a structure was spared from harm.

The property that wasn't damaged by fire was damaged by the smoke from the nearby fires. It's important to keep fire and smoke as far away from your property as possible.

More than 20 camera stations have been installed in Colorado, California, Oregon and Montana, all of which are considered high-risk for fire. In October, they added a second camera on Pioneer Mountain and are considering adding a third station on Cinnamon Ridge.

The community is familiar with the threat of fire. Big Sky has a dedicated fire department, forest and fuel management, fire safety education, and is able to benefit from the use of artificial intelligence to catch fires quickly, making us and our belongings a little safer in the place we love.