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drewkittyItty Bitty Bigger World - Fire Prevention Operations
[About a decade before current events in the IBBW timeline, i.e. 'The Mastermind.'.]
As a subject matter expert in the various forms of disaster, I've been invited to a presentation on wildfire prevention in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
That I'm absurdly wealthy even by the standards of San San is also helpful. But not in itself sufficient.
I've seen a lot of things online and by VR. But sometimes - and this is a point on which reasonable people disagree - there really is no substitute for in person examination.
I ignore the snacks, the drinks, the escorts and the sales team. I'm not here for the scenery. I'm here for the Project.
The Project is to make, once and for all, the Santa Cruz Mountains impervious to wildfire.
I'm familiar with the firebreaks and the fuel treatments. The land swap and credit financing power of San San has been fundamental in these changes. I'm vaguely aware of the mandatory (and San San financed) upgrades in built structures. Some have been undergrounded, others are literally fireproof. As you can drop napalm on them and they cannot burn.
The ecological preserves, most notably Big Basin State Park (still recovering from the 2020 fire), are now managed with prescribed fire and what had been ferociously expensive mechanical fuels treatment. But there were still no roads, and going to be no roads. Trails were controversial enough, even with the new Type VIII gyroscopic fire robots that could navigate a rugged trail while carrying 100 gallons of fire water - in the footprint of a two wheeled motorcycle.
What I wanted to know about was ignition prevention. And nine-tenths of wildfire ignitions are human caused.
"The 'No-Sparrow' system is capable of continuous high intensity monitoring...." I tuned it out. I mean, this is San San, so everything above ground is extensively monitored.
Bad guys have jammers. Scan blockers are a felony to possess, but that doesn't make them not exist.
Rangers. Great. More bots, also great. Cameras, sensors, chemscanners, wildfire acoustic detection arrays, infrascanners. Yawn.
"What if someone crashed a flyer _here_..." and I pointed at a particular spot.
"That's well within the no fly zone."
Immediately, two of the presenters exchanged glances and swapped out with the social media helpers. They could tell that I was not asking casually.
"Ranger Dodd, San San Big Basin State Parks."
They knew of course who I was.
"An authorized flyer can be ordered to land. Of course...."
Unauthorized flyers. Or authorized flyers with illegal hacks.
"interdiction is available 24/7/365, even in inclement weather."
I'd seen enough 'not yet staffed' icons to last a long lifetime.
"Not good enough," I continued. "Kinetic or energy?"
Kinetics, while technically possible, were a non-starter for all sorts of reasons. "Let's mount Gatling guns on the skyline" just doesn't have that public facing ring to it.
"Orbital," the ranger reluctantly conceded. "Heat up its control surfaces, it's going to land. Where we want it to."
That depended on buying orbital laser time. Suddenly. Despite lockouts.
I was suddenly very glad I was looking into this one. This was one of those "looks good on the surface" projects.
I don't believe in coincidences.
Once is enemy action.
"CHP rapid-reaction?"
"Four minutes."
"Four minutes is plenty of time to put the crash here..."
Dodd nodded. "I see where you're going. We have three options at that point. Further lasing, firebots and ribboning."
"Ribboning."
He changed the displays.
"Are you familiar with L-wire?"
"Very."
A display showed L-wire dug into shallow trenches every one hundred meters or so, in long circles and wide swaths in what I recognized as strategic places. The places you would want to put in a hand line, or contingency line, to stop a fire.
Other wires, not the L-wire but another system, ran to the tops of many of the trees, especially those on the ridges.
"Lightning protection system?" I asked.
He nodded. "But ribboning. These L-wires can be detonated on command to create immediate firebreaks. Harmless untill energized. Explosive when activated."
That was a creative use of L-wire. And I told him so.
It was not a compliment.
"We looked at bots. It would just take too long. And the wires double as monitoring sensors."
I nodded. Perhaps "No Sparrow" would be "No Gopher" as well.
I already knew about the fire bots. The big issue was water weight. A gallon of water is about 3.8 kg. And that's a lot of weight for a battery powered bot to carry. Capacitor bot? Forget about it. That meant turbine bots and that was a weight penalty as well.
Also, I'd seen orbital lasers fired at the ground to create firebreaks. Never seemed to work quite right; tended to throw embers both towards the fire (OK) and further away (not OK).
"So we, in a brief conversation, have identified at least six primary point failure sources. I don't believe that meets San San certification requirements for life safety array."
Everyone stopped. Jaws dropped across the room.
If I'd literally dropped my drawers and karked in the punch bowl, people would have been less shocked.
"Doesn't meet certification requirements" is not the kind of language you throw around casually.
"Perhaps we should defer to legal counsel?" someone started to say and was hushed.
"Risk Analysis 201 protocols dictate at least three decision points between a catastrophic event nexus and human loss of life. Let's say that your evac protocols is one. I'm just not seeing the other two. Slow react, you don't own the orbital lasers, L-wire can be sabotaged."
Or worse, detonated without authorization.
"We can't afford to buy a geosynch laser!"
"You can probably afford to contract for a life safety exclusive use rider. With cross certification. San Francisco Spaceport does exactly that."
"To protect hypersonic aircraft!"
"You let a wildfire get established in this area," I pointed again, "and a hypercrash is barely a media blip by comparison. Not to mention a lower casualty count. I was at Skybound!"
Everyone blanched. Worst wildfire disaster in California to date. And hypersonic intercontinental aircraft carry five hundred passengers
"Even with the 'lazers' you are still missing a critical control point. Hard search protocol. Kinetics. A human firefighting force on tac alert. Not nearly enough fire flyers. Water supply planning. Look at Helispot 69 Bravo."
"Putting helihydrants on all the ridgelines is not exactly environmentally friendly..."
"Neither is losing Santa Cruz! Too many legacy structures, too much Historical Preservation Act."
"Look, I'll work with you on it. I'll give you three days. But after that I'm going to have to go to a judge."
The food and beverages had disappeared. The party was over. The escorts were off set and the people remaining were subject matter experts, principals and attorneys.
Ranger Dodd slowly nodded.
FInally.
The real work could now begin.
[About a decade before current events in the IBBW timeline, i.e. 'The Mastermind.'.]
As a subject matter expert in the various forms of disaster, I've been invited to a presentation on wildfire prevention in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
That I'm absurdly wealthy even by the standards of San San is also helpful. But not in itself sufficient.
I've seen a lot of things online and by VR. But sometimes - and this is a point on which reasonable people disagree - there really is no substitute for in person examination.
I ignore the snacks, the drinks, the escorts and the sales team. I'm not here for the scenery. I'm here for the Project.
The Project is to make, once and for all, the Santa Cruz Mountains impervious to wildfire.
I'm familiar with the firebreaks and the fuel treatments. The land swap and credit financing power of San San has been fundamental in these changes. I'm vaguely aware of the mandatory (and San San financed) upgrades in built structures. Some have been undergrounded, others are literally fireproof. As you can drop napalm on them and they cannot burn.
The ecological preserves, most notably Big Basin State Park (still recovering from the 2020 fire), are now managed with prescribed fire and what had been ferociously expensive mechanical fuels treatment. But there were still no roads, and going to be no roads. Trails were controversial enough, even with the new Type VIII gyroscopic fire robots that could navigate a rugged trail while carrying 100 gallons of fire water - in the footprint of a two wheeled motorcycle.
What I wanted to know about was ignition prevention. And nine-tenths of wildfire ignitions are human caused.
"The 'No-Sparrow' system is capable of continuous high intensity monitoring...." I tuned it out. I mean, this is San San, so everything above ground is extensively monitored.
Bad guys have jammers. Scan blockers are a felony to possess, but that doesn't make them not exist.
Rangers. Great. More bots, also great. Cameras, sensors, chemscanners, wildfire acoustic detection arrays, infrascanners. Yawn.
"What if someone crashed a flyer _here_..." and I pointed at a particular spot.
"That's well within the no fly zone."
Immediately, two of the presenters exchanged glances and swapped out with the social media helpers. They could tell that I was not asking casually.
"Ranger Dodd, San San Big Basin State Parks."
They knew of course who I was.
"An authorized flyer can be ordered to land. Of course...."
Unauthorized flyers. Or authorized flyers with illegal hacks.
"interdiction is available 24/7/365, even in inclement weather."
I'd seen enough 'not yet staffed' icons to last a long lifetime.
"Not good enough," I continued. "Kinetic or energy?"
Kinetics, while technically possible, were a non-starter for all sorts of reasons. "Let's mount Gatling guns on the skyline" just doesn't have that public facing ring to it.
"Orbital," the ranger reluctantly conceded. "Heat up its control surfaces, it's going to land. Where we want it to."
That depended on buying orbital laser time. Suddenly. Despite lockouts.
I was suddenly very glad I was looking into this one. This was one of those "looks good on the surface" projects.
I don't believe in coincidences.
Once is enemy action.
"CHP rapid-reaction?"
"Four minutes."
"Four minutes is plenty of time to put the crash here..."
Dodd nodded. "I see where you're going. We have three options at that point. Further lasing, firebots and ribboning."
"Ribboning."
He changed the displays.
"Are you familiar with L-wire?"
"Very."
A display showed L-wire dug into shallow trenches every one hundred meters or so, in long circles and wide swaths in what I recognized as strategic places. The places you would want to put in a hand line, or contingency line, to stop a fire.
Other wires, not the L-wire but another system, ran to the tops of many of the trees, especially those on the ridges.
"Lightning protection system?" I asked.
He nodded. "But ribboning. These L-wires can be detonated on command to create immediate firebreaks. Harmless untill energized. Explosive when activated."
That was a creative use of L-wire. And I told him so.
It was not a compliment.
"We looked at bots. It would just take too long. And the wires double as monitoring sensors."
I nodded. Perhaps "No Sparrow" would be "No Gopher" as well.
I already knew about the fire bots. The big issue was water weight. A gallon of water is about 3.8 kg. And that's a lot of weight for a battery powered bot to carry. Capacitor bot? Forget about it. That meant turbine bots and that was a weight penalty as well.
Also, I'd seen orbital lasers fired at the ground to create firebreaks. Never seemed to work quite right; tended to throw embers both towards the fire (OK) and further away (not OK).
"So we, in a brief conversation, have identified at least six primary point failure sources. I don't believe that meets San San certification requirements for life safety array."
Everyone stopped. Jaws dropped across the room.
If I'd literally dropped my drawers and karked in the punch bowl, people would have been less shocked.
"Doesn't meet certification requirements" is not the kind of language you throw around casually.
"Perhaps we should defer to legal counsel?" someone started to say and was hushed.
"Risk Analysis 201 protocols dictate at least three decision points between a catastrophic event nexus and human loss of life. Let's say that your evac protocols is one. I'm just not seeing the other two. Slow react, you don't own the orbital lasers, L-wire can be sabotaged."
Or worse, detonated without authorization.
"We can't afford to buy a geosynch laser!"
"You can probably afford to contract for a life safety exclusive use rider. With cross certification. San Francisco Spaceport does exactly that."
"To protect hypersonic aircraft!"
"You let a wildfire get established in this area," I pointed again, "and a hypercrash is barely a media blip by comparison. Not to mention a lower casualty count. I was at Skybound!"
Everyone blanched. Worst wildfire disaster in California to date. And hypersonic intercontinental aircraft carry five hundred passengers
"Even with the 'lazers' you are still missing a critical control point. Hard search protocol. Kinetics. A human firefighting force on tac alert. Not nearly enough fire flyers. Water supply planning. Look at Helispot 69 Bravo."
"Putting helihydrants on all the ridgelines is not exactly environmentally friendly..."
"Neither is losing Santa Cruz! Too many legacy structures, too much Historical Preservation Act."
"Look, I'll work with you on it. I'll give you three days. But after that I'm going to have to go to a judge."
The food and beverages had disappeared. The party was over. The escorts were off set and the people remaining were subject matter experts, principals and attorneys.
Ranger Dodd slowly nodded.
FInally.
The real work could now begin.
