The synergy of technology and human work has allowed the detection system to work successfully
So far in the year, there have been 116 wildfires that have affected 20 thousand 949 hectares around Durango, so it was designed a plan to extinguish the forest fires so very efficient.
Reynaldo Paredes has been a forest ranger for 7 years in the Durango mountains, for 8 hours he climbs a tower and watches if there is a fire in the area.
“As it is the dry season we have to be very aware of the fires, that there are no fires at this time”, Reynaldo Paredes, rangers in Durango.
Reynaldo’s work was the common way to monitor fires in this place, where most producers make a living by planting and cutting pine wood.
Next to this tower in the town of La Canal, the Forest Management Unit 4 of Durango installed another with an internet signal and video surveillance cameras that help monitor the fires 24 hours a day. The forest fire detection system, located in the Ejido Vencedores, allows monitoring the forest from any device with internet.
“Detection is much faster because what the human eye does not see, the cameras do and with the use of the zoom we can see it”, José Guadalupe Reyes, monitoring of the Forest Fire Detection System, Durango.
Once the fire is detected, says José Guadalupe, you can even locate the hot spot through virtual maps. The cameras can triangulate the location of the fire, that’s when they call on the fire crews.
“This system revolutionized us a lot, they detect it practically instantly due to the monitoring that exists and we get there faster. We have decreased to an outbreak of fire when before they were large forest fires ”, Ubaldo Díaz, Fire Brigade Chief, Durango.
Since 2018, this detection system began to be developed, which currently has 16 cameras that cover 200 thousand hectares of forest in the municipality of San Dimas in the Durango mountain range, this technology allows having much faster information even than organizations dedicated to the combat of fires in the country.
“We detected the fire of April 11 before 11 o’clock. Here at Conafor the fire detection flame never appeared. In Conabio it was detected the same day 2 hours later and the United States forest system detected it 7 hours later the same day ”, Jorge Fernández de Castro, Director of Forest Management Unit 4, Durango.
2021 has been a particularly dry year, which has Durango among the 10 states with the most forest fires in the country, however, the numbers of fires within forest management unit 4 are lower, reporting 9 fires with 266 hectares affected by the fire.
“To fight a fire more effectively, it is time to arrive at the fire, with this we can arrive much earlier to be able to fight it and that a fire does not become uncontrollable”, Jorge Fernández de Castro, Director of Forest Management Unit 4, Durango.
Source: noticieros.televisa.com
