Crews at the parcel a week out, not across the region a day out.

A fire that can be predicted can be prevented. PRIMER gives forestry and fire services, emergency managers and land agencies the dated hectares in their jurisdiction, so the fuel is treated before it burns, the fire that does start is met at the parcel and steered away from homes, and the loss never happens.

Talk to us The fuel-state map

From response to prevention

Prediction turns suppression into prevention.

Today an agency learns a fire's path from the fire. With the date and the path a week out, the hectare is cut or cooled before it can ignite, the fire that starts anyway is held at the parcel and turned away from the subdivision behind it, and the homes in its path are defended before the wind arrives. Every mitigated fire is a loss that never reaches the ledger.

Pre-positioning

Crews, engines and aircraft staged at the parcels that carry dates in the coming week, so a fire that starts is caught small and kept away from homes.

Treatment before the date

A dated hectare cut, cooled or grazed before it burns, so the fire never starts and the homes in its path are never at risk.

Prescribed fire in safe windows

Burns scheduled into windows the model calls safe for that fuel state and forecast weather, and held when it does not.

Warnings on a date

Notices, evacuation planning and route management for the parcels with a path, a week out rather than county-wide on the day.

The layer beneath the rating

Where the rating says "very high" for a district, the map says which hectares.

Every agency runs a fire-danger rating computed from weather and anchored to hand samples taken a fortnight apart. PRIMER's ground-state learner produces the modelled fuel state of every hectare in the jurisdiction, hourly, learned from instruments standing in the fuel. It is delivered whether or not any parcel carries a date that week.

A prescribed burn in grassland, low flame, drip torches along a graded break

Counties and public land

A path a week out is an evacuation plan with time to run it.

A county emergency manager today learns a fire's path from the fire. With a date and a path a week out, verges are cut along the path, routes are kept open, engines are pre-positioned at the subdivision edge, and residents inside the path are told which day matters.

A land agency burns, grazes and breaks fuel from a calendar and a rating. PRIMER gives it the fuel state of every hectare and the date each will be ready, so burns are lit into fuel that will carry and not into fuel that will run.

Add-on

An agency is usually the counterparty the agent negotiates with. It can also hold the plan.

An agency on the Intervention Plan has a named agent working the utilities, counties and landowners it cannot easily reach, so its own crews land where the fire will be, and it holds the ledger. The after-season report is written for the legislature and the auditor as much as for the agency.

How the plan works →