The Orange County Fire Authority has reached an agreement with Paladin Industries to test software that models wildfire spread and different response strategies, giving firefighters a way to compare choices before they face a real fire. The work is expected to begin this winter.
That matters now because the agreement was finalized the previous week, and wildfire agencies are still looking for tools that can sharpen decisions as fires move fast and communications can fail in the field. At a wildfire technology roundtable hosted by Rep. Young Kim on Tuesday, Oct. 13, Mike Sheehan said the software could help OCFA revisit historical wildfires and see how different actions might have changed a fire’s path.
Sheehan said predictive modeling has long been available, but it only shows where a fire may be in one hour, three hours or 10 hours if firefighters do nothing. The new software is meant to add the human side of the equation, letting crews test how actions such as establishing containment lines or dropping fire retardant might change the outcome. Sheehan said those simulations could be especially useful in places with a history of wildfire, including along Laguna Canyon Road.
Jackson Yip said the agreement with OCFA was finalized the previous week and made the agency Paladin’s first fire agency partner in Southern California. He also said Paladin does not use AI in the software. Instead, the company is trying to preserve the reasons behind each decision so analysts can examine why a fire spread the way it did. That is the sharp edge of the project: it is meant to offer more detailed decision analysis than predictive modeling, but it is doing so without AI.
The Orange County Fire Authority is also working with FireWERX on a subgrant tied to the effort, though the proposed amount is $300,000 and any cost to OCFA was not immediately clear. Fire departments can already track engines and other vehicles, but keeping tabs on individual firefighters after they leave those vehicles remains difficult in remote areas when communications are unreliable.
Sheehan said the point is not to replace field judgment but to make it better. If the software can show which actions matter most in a safe setting, OCFA can build stronger pre-plans and respond with more confidence when the next fire starts moving.
