PHOTOS: There is no alarm bell ringing or fire pole to slide down at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego’s School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences. Still, at the first sign of wildfire anywhere in California, members of the WIFIRE team are ready.
A unit within SDSC’s Societal Computing and Innovation Lab (SCIL), WIFIRE informs responders with real-time models of how a wildfire will spread, creating predictive maps out of data points such as wind conditions, topography, temperature and the dryness, density and types of foliage that serve as fuel. And on Jan. 7, 2025, when fire was first spotted in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in west Los Angeles, the WIFIRE team was ready.
“We were staffed up because of the high winds expected,” says Jessica Block, WIFIRE’s associate director of emergency response programs. “And we needed that staff, too. Those were very extreme conditions.” The National Weather Service had previously issued a Particularly Dangerous Situation alert for Southern California, warning of damaging wind gusts, relative humidity below 10% and dry fuels — prime conditions for wildfire.
