PG&E adds more High-Definition Cameras to monitor wildfire conditions

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. - As part of the Community Wildfire Safety Program, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has now installed more than 600 weather stations and 130 high-definition (HD) cameras across its service area.

PG&E will continue to expand these networks in high fire-threat areas to enhance weather forecasting and modeling and improve the company’s ability to predict and respond to extreme wildfire danger.

“The station observations allow our meteorologists to analyze critical fire weather elements like extreme wind, temperature and low humidity,” said Ashley Helmetag, a PG&E senior meteorologist. “The stations and cameras are a part of our real-time situational awareness tools that assist us as we make decisions on Public Safety Power Shutoffs to protect our communities.”

This data is also critical information for PG&E’s analysts in the Wildfire Safety Operations Center, the “hub” from where the company monitors threats across its service territory and coordinates with first responders and public safety officials to respond to emerging threats.

The HD cameras are part of the ALERTWildfire Camera Network, a situational awareness tool built by the University of California San Diego, the University of Nevada, Reno and the University of Oregon.

The high-definition, pan-tilt-zoom cameras have near-infrared capabilities that allow firefighters, first responders and companies such as PG&E to confirm and monitor wildfires.

More Planned By 2022, PG&E plans to have installed 1,300 weather stations and 600 HD cameras – a density of one weather station roughly every 20 circuit-miles and video coverage of roughly 90 percent within the highest fire-risk areas.

For more information visist PG&E’s new weather webpage at www.pge.com/weather.

To view some of the cameras along our part of the coast that PG&E and other utilities use for monitoring fire conditions follow this link: http://www.alertwildfire.org/centralcoast/index.html