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.