Webinar: Assessing Wildfire Risk Before it Escalates

Wildfire risk is no longer exclusively a Western U.S. problem.

Utilities and emergency managers across the Midwest and Eastern U.S. are being asked to build a wildfire strategy in a much faster timeline than the West faced, often with limited fire history to work from. So where do you start?

This session pairs two experts who came at the same problem from opposite ends: operational response and meteorology. Russ Johnson spent 32 years with the U.S. Forest Service, retiring as Fire Chief of the San Bernardino National Forest and a National Type I Incident Commander, before building Esri's public safety practice. Chris Arends spent 24 years as a Navy meteorologist, then helped build one of the first utility wildfire weather networks in the country as Chief Meteorologist at San Diego Gas & Electric.

Together they'll walk through what most vulnerability assessments get wrong: likelihood alone isn't risk. You need values at risk too, for a defensible PSPS or dispatch call.

Presenters

Chris Arends

Director of Client Solutions, Western Weather Group

Chris Arends is a meteorologist who spent 24 years as a U.S. Navy Meteorology and Oceanography officer, retiring as a Commander after three deployments supporting amphibious, carrier, and Navy SEAL operations and directing operations at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. He then led utility weather operations for eight years as Chief Meteorologist at San Diego Gas & Electric, building one of the most densely instrumented weather monitoring networks in the country and turning ground-level observation into fast PSPS and grid decisions. He is now Director of Client Solutions at Western Weather Group. He holds a B.S. in Meteorology from Cornell, an M.S. in Oceanography from the Naval Postgraduate School, and an MBA from Georgetown.

Russ Johnson

Former Fire Chief · CMO and Co-Founder, Bent Ear Solutions

Russ Johnson spent 32 years with the U.S. Forest Service, starting as a smokejumper and finishing as Chief of Fire and Emergency Operations for the San Bernardino National Forest, where he ran one of the first GIS-based situational awareness systems in public safety. As Incident Commander on a National Type I Incident Management Team he led responses to complex wildfires and emergencies across the United States and abroad. At Esri he built and led the Public Safety and Homeland Security practice for 17 years and later directed all of Esri's industry programs. He co-founded Bent Ear Solutions in 2019 and advises state and local agencies, ports, and utilities on situational awareness, wildfire risk assessment, and after-action review.