Kane Steinbruecker - Chief Fire Warden

Conversation with Kane Steinbruecker, Chief Fire Warden of Clearwater-Potlatch Timber Protective Association in Idaho. Kane has been in fire his whole career, starting in high school 25 years ago. In this conversation, we get a sense of how the CPTPA organization interfaces with the several other government and private agencies, as well as their ongoing efforts to bring the best technologies they can to their efforts for protecting the land and resources. 

Transcript

Bryan 0:04

good morning and welcome to the solving wildfire podcast. I'm your host, Brian Gardner today with Kane Stein Bruker, chief fire warden of the Clearwater county potlatch timber protective association in Idaho. Kane has been a lifer in wildfire, starting as early as high school. He's filled a lot of roles seeing a lot of things come and go and has a wealth of experience and ideas for what can work. And what's not yet ready to work in wildfire. I'm excited to have him on. So Kane for our listeners. Can we start with a little bit on your organization?

Kane 0:36

Yeah. so I'm the chief fire warden for the Clearwater Potlatch Timber Protective Association. we're one of two timber protective associations in Idaho. We're, we're in existence, through Idaho Code Title 38 1 11. Basically we formed in the early 19 hundreds by timber companies realizing that there was a need for wildland fire protection on their, industrial lands. They had such a large investment in that timber that they wanted to protect it. This was all prior to the big burn in 1910. so they were very forward thinking in those days as well. Now, fast forward 120 something years. there's also a Department of Lands districts and, other municipalities that provide fire protection. We were organized in the past, very early in the, in the wildland fire game in the United States, and certainly in the West. we never changed our organization. We just built code to, to codify our existence. And so that's where we started. Now my role with, the Timber Protective Association as the chief fire warden is mostly administrative, as it pertains to our district. so, any of the, the roles as far as overseeing the collection of assessments, overseeing the issuance of district contracts, overseeing, the billing for fires, overseeing the management of the budget, that all, falls on my lap. And then supervising our operational resources. we've got area fire wardens that manage those four areas that I spoke about where we've got our station. Those folks. Those are, our area fire wardens. They have deputies and assistants that work for them as well as fire crews, engine crews, cooks, carpenters, you name it. we've got a lot of folks that we employ to fill various roles, mechanics, equipment, operators. We do it all. But like I mentioned earlier, that span of control thing where you can really only effectively oversee five to seven people. Just like any business, we've got a, flow chart and an organizational structure that allows for, for those folks to not be overloaded. so, My job is to oversee those first level of seven people to ensure that all of the operational things are engaged in operating smoothly.

2:49

Thanks. How about some of your personal background on your path into fire, to where you are now and so forth?

Kane 2:56

I've been with this organization for about 25 years now. I started on a hand crew in the late nineties, still in high school, working summers. And, once I graduated from high school, there was really no looking back. Fire was what I was interested in doing and I was planning on making a career of it at that point. so, I've stayed with this organization through the entirety of my career. Most of the roles along the way and, eventually worked my way up to the chief fire warden position.

Bryan 3:24

it'd be fun to look back on those 25 years and five years from now, look back on your last 30 years and do a, technology flow of what was life like.

Kane 3:37

Yeah.

Bryan 3:37

we wanna see a steep uptick in this last five years of technology getting a little bit better and innovation a little better. And then poof,

Kane 3:45

I, I think it's like any industry, technology is certainly on a curve and, and, uh, boy, it sure feels like in our industry it's, it's a wave that's about to break, you know? It seems like just when you think it can't get any better, there's some something brand new that just totally blows your mind.

Bryan 4:02

On that note, let's just jump straight to Jones Jones for surveillance, drones, for delivering retardants. What are your thoughts?

Kane 4:09

What comes to my mind is two kinds of platforms. We're looking at the small recreational models. something that's, that's controlled from within, say, three to five miles. And then you've got your larger, more, uh, I guess, industrially suited platforms such as the type that the military uses. You know, that could be controlled from a, say a Conex, or a control center On the other side of the planet. I guess to start with, I would be curious to, to understand which platforms you guys would be looking at. I will just say that for efficiency's sake, we wanna deliver the most water or retardant or, at times aerial delivery of fire that we can. Um, we want to get the most bang for our buck when we're, when we're doing those things. so, a lighter platform that has a, a heavier lifting capacity or a greater gallonage capacity is, is certainly what, would be the most beneficial to us.

Bryan 5:07

Okay. So guys, I just, interviewed yesterday, these guys are, they're great engineers and they do the rotor drones, the quad or the hex copter. There's another guy that I'll be recording with him next week and they've flown their 500 pound lift drone and they wanna get their a thousand pound drones out there,. And this. It's like a hex copter set up, but they've got 12 rotors on there. so more stability and more power, more failure redundancy. but still compared to a sky crane that's a whole order of magnitude difference. And I think the. The Black Hawk, their firehawk is doing a thousand gallons when fully loaded, but then fixed wing, of course, it's fun talking to some people. They say when you're bringing suppressant, fixed wing is the only thing that makes any sense because just to take off a vertical takeoff you have to move so much air to get all that weight up, into the sky. so I think we're going to see You see a bunch of people try these things here and there, and then the investors put their money where they think things are most likely to succeed And then ultimately you get a, dominant technology that ends up becoming in retrospect, obvious solution. There are also many areas of it. There's suppression, but then there's detect. long-term surveillance, but then there's also detection in terms of tactical when they're fighting a fire. So it's a large set of solutions that can contribute to the overall solution. And I'm looking for what solutions do you guys see as feasible and infeasible, but also operationally is a big piece. We can get this big, huge apparatus that has everything end to end, but if you guys aren't gonna trust it and aren't gonna push that run button or that trust button, really, it, it's not gonna go anywhere.

Kane 6:50

Sure. Yeah. And, you're talking a thousand pound lift capacity that's comparable to our type three helicopter platforms that we're utilizing now. We fly 70 to 120 gallons in those, in those aircraft. And, certainly, fixed wings do have their place when airially delivering fire retardant, the traditional orange stuff that folks think about. But we do utilize, the hella tankers, the, sky cranes. That, uh, you're probably familiar with if you've been talking with the folks there at Erickson. You know, we utilize those to deliver retardant as well, especially when we need to place it very strategically. so, certainly, the helicopter it does still have its place when you consider, delivering retardant, you just need to make sure that you can deliver enough of it to make it worthwhile.

Bryan 7:34

Yeah, and that's the big piece is when you're only delivering a hundred gallons roughly, is that spitting on the fire or is that actually making a difference?

Kane 7:42

It just depends on the fire. Oftentimes it is just spitting on it, but oftentimes that can make the difference between that fire staying small and, being caught in the initial attack phase. And. You can hold it there instead of having to continue on into extended attack and, and spend sometimes over millions of dollars to, to corral those fires. so, you know, a, a small expense up front oftentimes yields, uh, some, some big rewards if you can, if you can implement it in a timely fashion. so, yeah, I think so.

Bryan 8:10

You just have your own fleet of these smaller Type three helicopter.

Kane 8:14

Uh, no, we contract ours. Um, we contract one through an exclusive use contract every year. It's a bell, 2 0 6 L three or an L four. It's a fairly common platform. It's probably almost what everybody thinks of when they, they think about a bell helicopter. Um, and yeah,

Bryan 8:33

just carrying that bucket underneath or does it have a tank?

Kane 8:36

Nope. It, it carries a, what's called a Bambi bucket. I'm sure that's a, uh, a trademarked name, so you may have to beat that out. But, yeah, they do, they carry a, a bucket. And, uh, you know, the, the benefits of those small type three platforms is that they can dip out of small water sources. Little ponds, small creeks are, our pilots are very good at making a, a small. Just a small water source worked for'em, and being able to find and access that somewhere near the fire rather than, than having to make a turnaround to somewhere like a river or lake that a, that a hella tanker may have to do. so they can, they can deliver more cycles of water, in a short amount of time. You know, obviously they're not delivering as much, but, there's, there's certainly some benefit there to having'em fast at.

Bryan 9:22

Yeah. One of the pitches of the drone companies do is they're, they're not carrying, or at least no one's trying to carry as much as a sky crane. They wanna do swarms. And if you can have a swarm of 10, maybe even up to 20 drones that are continuously cycling and there are argument also there, is that you can autonomously control 10 drones in the airspace far more safely than you can, even just two helicopters in the air.

Kane 9:48

Right Bryan, and you bring up a good point. You know, the airspace conflict is, is always an issue with us. If we have three or more aircraft on a fire, we're, we're gonna have a, an airplane overhead Who's coordinating that? We'll have an, air group tactical supervisor that, that coordinates all of that aircraft and, obviously they'll be in contact with the folks on the ground so that we can ensure that none of the ground resources are, are in harm's way and, and that they're clear of the line when those aircraft are dropping. But, there's certainly a, a large amount of coordination that goes into making sure that we don't have. Incidents, mid-air, or incidents with the air resources versus ground resources. so, that's something that will certainly have to be figured out. Safety's always in the forefront of what we do, so making sure that, that, that airspace is coordinated. currently we don't operate unmanned aircraft systems at the same time, in the same areas of the fire that we're operating manned aircraft systems. just because. The platforms that we're using right now are, are so small that they're difficult for pilots to see. They're, they're untrackable, they don't show up on radar. They don't show up on, on a DSB or any of those other aircraft tracking platforms. Um, the Air tactical group supervisors can't see'em from their positions above, so it's just too dangerous for us to operate the two at the same time. Um,

Bryan 11:05

let's now on the authority who. Who's got responsibility in there? so you guys, you guys have your own private land that you're protecting, but who's in charge of over the airspace and who's doing that, that aerial coordination.

Kane 11:19

so ultimately on the fire, all operations are controlled by the incident commander. Um, when we bring on, when the incident commander orders aircraft for that fire, they will generally order an air tactical group supervisor, what we call an air attack. and that's an aircraft orbit overhead. and oversee and coordinate, the airspace for those aircraft. they'll also be the link for communication between those multiple aircraft and the folks on the ground. so, that person is,

Bryan 11:48

so whether the fire's burning on your land or next to your land, it still is the usually state, county level. However, the incident commander gets assigned to that.

Kane 11:58

Right. so what we use our, interagency resources, like I said earlier, we, we have our own exclusive use contract helicopter that we keep on district. It, it services our 1 million acre district. If we need resources beyond that. We have agreements with our vendor. Um, if they have aircraft available, we can get'em through call when needed contracts. but in the interest of safety and our interagency training, we don't utilize three or more of those aircraft without having one of those air attack platforms overhead. It's just, there's, there's so many intricacies and safety concerns when you're working with aircraft that, that's just the necessary thing that takes the load off of the incident commander and allows him to stay engaged with the fire. Your span OFM controls only so long, you can really only safely and effectively oversee like five to seven people. And so if you've got three aircraft in the. Those are three people that you have to oversee. If you've got three crews on the ground, there's three more and then two dozers and a couple of fire engines. You can see how quickly you can exceed your span of control. so the more of that that you can break up, if you can give those aircraft to that air tactical group supervisor, and just have that one person that you're overseeing at that point? That's the most effective way to handle that. And a lot of, a lot of incident commanders aren't familiar with, with working with those aircraft platforms. A lot of folks come up through the ground resource, Step ladder, so to speak. There's different, career paths and fire. There's, there's aviation, there's engines, there's, crews, there's smoke jumping, and so everybody kind of comes up in a different way and has a, a different skill set and, a different comfort level with working with certain things. so, that all kind of plays into to how much of that or what you, you spread out when you're, when you're the incident commander and trying to, assign roles on the fire.

Bryan 13:50

so an incident commander, let's say one who came up working on the ground, and that's been his bread and butter, that's what he knows what he's familiar with. Then he's on a fire that is burning onto your guys' property. Is he the one calling the shots on bringing in, aerial support or are you guys offering the aerial support and then he says yes or no? How does that work?

Kane 14:11

That's correct. Yeah, we do a daily briefing every morning and everybody's aware of what aircraft resources are available on the district, as well as on the zone. And, that incident commander knows that, those aircraft are available. so when he gets to a fire, he already has in the back of his mind what resources he's got available to call in to, to support him in the suppression of that fire. we work with, when I mentioned interagency, all of our local districts, whether they're forest service, Idaho Department of Lands, all of our cooperators, we all go through a central interagency dispatch center, and that's where all those requests go, and those dispatchers fill those requests with those available aircraft that we have identified on the morning brief.

Bryan 14:54

Okay. Now let's, let's kind of takes us to the, the timeframe of things. One of the things that you had mentioned earlier, and that we're all aware of that smaller and sooner you catch the fire, the fewer resources it takes to put the thing out and the less damage is done. You have your morning briefing when a known fire is already active and burning things down, but. Two o'clock in the afternoon, someone detect the fire, what happens and how's the speed of response operating in that world.

Kane 15:23

so no matter who detects the fire, the call goes into our dispatch center, and they immediately will dispatch the closest crew.

Bryan 15:31

is that a county level, a state level dispatch?

Kane 15:34

It's an interagency dispatch center. so it's not, it's not a municipality. It's part of, it's formed of all interagency members. so there's forest service, Idaho Department of Lands, bureau of Land Management, our organization, all of the, the fire.

Bryan 15:52

so it's public and private interagency, not just government inter.

Kane 15:56

Correct? Yes. Yep. Okay. And, and I guess I should clarify, we are considered quasi local government. so in that respect, they are all government agencies that operate through there. They all have, authorization by code or ownership ground to suppress wild land fires in the state.

Bryan 16:17

Okay. so call goes into there two in the afternoon and someone's maybe driving by, or maybe your employees are out thinning the forest but someone calls in plume of smoke and they say, I think someone should check this out. It goes to that dispatch, and then what happens from there?

Kane 16:33

Dispatch Will, will send a tone out, out, out over the radio and our crews will, will respond immediately. whatever the closest crew is, will be the first one dispatched. We also pre-identify what we call run cards, which have a list of resources that should be dispatched to any fire. Based on the fire danger for that given day. so dispatch knows when they get the call for a fire in a certain drainage, they, they look it up. They, they get the location from whoever's reporting the fire. They look for the run card for that particular area and that tells them which, which resources to dispatch, whether it's a couple of type six fire engines, a dozer, and a type three helicopter. Or, or so on.

Bryan 17:18

okay. And I guess if you have a section of, land that has had lightning for the last 48 hours and another half, that's the other side of the river hasn't had anything, you probably preposition your resources so that they're ready to run where a fire might pop.

Kane 17:35

We do, yes, we have four stations on our, 1 million acres that we protect. And, it's not uncommon for us to move resources and preposition them if we know that there's a, a lightning or a wind event or, uh, holiday weekends, busy times. Oftentimes we'll increase staffing. we'll keep folks late. when we think there's a high probability of fire, we try to be in the places where, where we anticipate there could be a fire.

Bryan 17:59

Okay, so that stuff's done, and this is all interagency, you guys, you just know your terrain, know your field. You all have the same mission and you prepare in advance.

Kane 18:10

We do. Yep. Yep. We, uh, we work pretty diligently through the winter months to, uh, to make sure that these relationships are in place and strong and that, our neighboring partners understand what, what our, response. Protocols are, and likewise, it's not uncommon for a neighboring agency to, list one of our fire engines on their run cards. especially during higher extreme fire danger.

Bryan 18:38

Yeah. What portion of your people are on the payroll and what portion are just volunteers? It's fun out there having lunch with, with firefighters out there in the sticks. And so many of them have been volunteers and they all just, oh, that 2:00 AM call where everything goes off and you wake up and totally disoriented, you're grabbing your gear, trying to remember head to the fire station. And they're not getting paid anything for it. and maybe some people get paid if they get called out, but what's that look like?

Kane 19:08

Right. That's a great question, Brian. And so all of the folks that work for our organization are, are paid professional firefighters. during the peak of fire season, we employ roughly 50 folks. We are a full-time fire organization. we have some local rural volunteer fire departments who are, as you said, unpaid volunteers. we have agreements in place through the Idaho Department of Lands with those folks to utilize those resources. And so there, I believe on my district alone, there's 12 or 13 different unpaid volunteer fire departments that also work hand in hand with us, in our effort to suppress those.

Bryan 19:46

12 to 13 departments. When the volunteers get called up, are we talking 10 to 20 per department showing up, or five 40?

Kane 19:55

It just depends on the department. We may just get one engine staff with two folks, or we may get 20 folks on a myriad of different apparatus. It really just depends on, on the size of the department. You know, we're a small rural community, so as you can guess Orofino is. Is the county seat and a population of 3000 folks. The fact that we get a response of maybe 20, 20 people from the local fire department and five apparatus is amazing. But as you can imagine, some of the other communities are much smaller and that response varies pretty well just based on size of those communities and ability to interact.

Bryan 20:30

Man. My, my high school I graduated from in Colorado, I think was approaching 3000 people in the whole four years of high school. And there are towns smaller than that.

Kane 20:40

Yep. Yeah. It was hard for me to imagine something that big.

Bryan 20:43

Yeah, but that's out there. That's where you live. That's where your businesses are. And I know that sometimes the employers there, they know that whoever their volunteer firefighters are, if that alarm rings, they're just not gonna have that employee show up that day and it's a pre-approved day off. Cause they're doing something more important.

Kane 20:58

They're doing their civic duty.

Bryan 21:00

Yeah. Interesting. There are a lot of directions I'd like to take this, but one thing I wanna make sure we cover is you guys, you have your million acres out there and or how many million acres?

Kane 21:12

R right at about 1 million acres is what we protect.

Bryan 21:15

Okay. You guys have your million acres out there, and there's the county, the state all the inter agencies that you guys work with. All right, so one thing I want to get through is your interest and your, budget for innovation and investing in innovation to detect fires early so that you can get to them and then to suppress those fires. Now, this is totally agnostic as to whether it's an automated detection or just more humans out there in towers with binoculars. What's your incentive to invest? And some examples too of 2015. I know you guys had a big fire that burned a lot through there. How much money did you guys lose? What's your perspective on investing in solutions detection and suppression, and then, I guess let's just start there.

Kane 22:00

Okay. Yeah. And so as far as loss, I guess I should qualify. We are not actually a landowner. We protect 1 million acres of federal, state, and private ground, but we don't own the land. so the loss actually is incurred by those landowners and to guess at what they lost in 2015 I really couldn't say. That would be a question for them probably, but I know we spoke about values of the land earlier. I will say that we do have tracks of land that have over 40 million per square mile of timber on them. so we're dealing with hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in timber which is a commercial resource. It's a crop to these landowners. It's not a, it's not old growth timber. It's a cycled crop. It's just a sustainable cycle crop, just like a wheat farmer would grow wheat, it just takes a little longer to get to harvest for those folks. As far as budgets for detection, innovation, things like that, we do spend between about 25 and$50,000 a year on fire detection. There's multiple ways to spend that. We do have a couple of fixed wing platform that we operate. That's our primary source of detect. And it's all visual detection. It's a daily flight in the afternoon, in the heat of the day when we know those fires are gonna be smoking up. It's daily so that we can catch the one today that maybe wasn't smoking up yesterday and get on it before it becomes a problem. We also are working on implementing camera systems on our mountaintop lookouts. Currently they don't have infrared detection capabilities, but that's something that we're considering in the future. Those camera systems are very expensive and take a lot of support to install in some of those back country locations where things like internet service or cell service are not available or and you'd mentioned SpaceX and I know Elon Musk has got that starlink platform now. For providing internet. so that's something that we're looking into for some of those sites. But you know, it's not just the connectivity. There's also battery storage, solar panels to there's a lot to consider when we put those into positions. so we're working on developing those right now. But our sites that are equipped currently with sell and power we're working on those as pilot projects with fire detection cameras. And so far it's been very success.

Bryan 24:04

Do you guys have your own tech teams, your own engineers that are developing this? Or do you contract out to other startup companies?

Kane 24:11

We don't. We've got our association, our organization is somewhat of an arm of the Idaho Department of Lands, and so we utilize their tech folks to help us in developing and implementing these.

Bryan 24:26

Okay so the government the government agency engineers, and you coordinate together, and if you need more engineers, you have to find another budget. Or if you need a different expertise, someone has to learn it. I guess someone just has to learn it.

Kane 24:39

Yep. Yep. And our organization over the years has been been very good at doing things ourselves learning how to do something and implementing that we are very prideful in our ability to sustain and self sustain our own organization.

Bryan 24:53

Hmm. so, I totally cheer and applaud and understand the pride of we can do this. Cause I, I've been on a number of teams that's the self-sufficiency allows things to go fast. You develop your own internal capabilities, your internal talent set. But then there's the, the other side of that sword is, The not invented here mentality. What, what's your perspective on not invented here being the negative and we're self-sufficient and we can get this done being the positive. What, do you see in your teams?

Kane 25:25

Well, I, I think there's, In the past, the tech world and I guess the world of good ideas it, it moves fast and there are a lot of good ideas that come from within our own organization and interagency partners that we work with. Don't get me wrong, there are some very smart motivated and talented individuals there. But oftentimes there's a lot more folks like yourself who are outside of the industry, who have the expertise and who are always looking for the next best thing. And I think it's just an organic, collaborative effort of those two stars colliding at the right time. To, to create real innovation in an industry. And so I think, there, there's certainly good ideas that come from our side, but we need people like you. Who have the knowledge, skills, and abilities in these arenas to say whether this is possible or not. It's easy to come for us to come up with a good idea. It's very difficult for that idea to be implemented, accepted, and turned into the norm. so yeah, I hope, let's go.

Bryan 26:29

so thank you. And that's actually exactly, I wanna make those stars collide. Let's just make more interactions happen. so let's say we get a, there are two things I want to go to. Oregon, the state of Oregon, they've had a nighttime, man surveillance. They've been flying over and they've been using night vision goggles and an infrared sensor. The infrareds are a lot more expensive. The night vision goggles they have found. I guess last summer they detected 62 fires. This is just by numbers remembered in my head, so you know, fact check me and correct them later. But they identified 62 fires at night with these guys, and then 57 of them were with the night vision goggles. Five of them were first detected with the infrared, and of course after they see a fire, then they go look at it. And the infrared, you get more from both. But the night vision was a lot less expensive. Have you guys. All right. so one I want to ask, have you guys spoken with Oregon and much on, on how they got that together. And then number two, I want to go to stars colliding some startup or innovator and engineer says, I have this idea. I wanna bring it to Potlatch and to Idaho. I wanna see if we can get this implemented. How did they go about doing that? And especially if you have any examples of people who have tried and succeeded or failed even. Yeah. And why did they fail? so first Oregon, then we'll go to innovators.

Kane 27:46

Okay. Yeah. I'll address Oregon first, and if I forget to address the innovators, let's bring, reel me back into it. sometimes I'm pretty good at getting off track, but I'll do my best. I'm just like, you Yeah. We're certainly no, no stranger to using infrared technology especially at night. That seems to be when it works the best, when the ground is cool, but the areas of the fire are hot. That's, that's a common technology that's utilized on some of our larger incidents. And, basically the, there's a need for something like that. And there is a need that outweighs the, the amount of platforms that are available, especially on a busy fire season. so something like that yes is there's absolutely a need for it. The the method to, I guess, get more of those platforms into our industry first is like anything, it's based on funding. And I think that there has to be, To receive additional funding for more of those platforms. It has to come from two directions. It has to come from our side with us requesting through our interagency partners that, that there are more available. We need to identify that there's a need there. And then also it's probably gonna have to come from those contractors or vendors side of things. Having the platforms available and soliciting for those contracts. Those are, those are resources that are contracted in the, in the springtime for say, an entire region. And in fact, they may start in one region and work their way around through three or four regions as the years and the fire seasons go on. Just because different fire season or different regions, fire seasons don't necessarily line up. Alaska is fairly early. You've got the southwest and the Great Basin, and then eventually the Northern Rockies starts having fires along with southern southwestern Oregon, northern Northeastern, or northwestern Washington in that area. Yeah, we certainly utilize those platforms and they're certainly helpful. Very efficient in detection, but again, also very expensive. That platform costs a lot more per hour to operate than our Cessna 180 5. Just our small fixed wing detection airplane, um mm-hmm.

Bryan 29:54

And I'm a an entrepreneur and I want to do early detection, and I want it to spread from region to region as quickly as possible. My best bet is I need to demonstrate that it works enough to someone up in Alaska and get that contract put in Alaska's fire season starts early, have resources available, and then it's possible that someone down in the lower 40 is going to be able to pick that up and then maybe someone in the Rockies would pick it up toward the later fire season of. It's gonna have to grow from season to season. But if we were over optimizing for the uptake of this solution, I'm not even maybe it's technology, but really I think it's a solution.

Kane 30:32

Right. If you wanted to hit multiple regions in the same year, yeah, that would be the way to do it, is start in Alaska and you work your way around the, around the compass. Um, probably not likely, especially in the first year of something like that. The best method and I'm not probably the right guy to talk to on, on how to get that implemented. Those are conversations for fo folks much further up the food chain than myself. But yeah, that's, I can, I can certainly see that they're gonna need to understand from our side that there's a need and they're gonna need to understand from the entrepreneur's side that there's a platform available or that there's technology in place that can be retrofitted onto a platform that already exists to be able to be able to accomplish this work. And I think, we utilize. Infrared technology on our small drones on wild land fire. so if unmanned aerial aircraft are something that you're looking into doing, a larger platform, that might be something anytime that we can take the human exposure out of something and not expose someone to the chance of an aircraft crash, or anytime you can take that element out, that increases safety. Um, it may come with its own set of safety protocols to ensure safety on for folks on the ground if there's night shifts working or whatever. whatever But if there's an unmanned aerial. Platform that has this infrared technology available that can be launched from say, Spokane, Washington, and cover the entire group of fires that's burning in the Northwestern area. I, I would think that that would be a helpful piece of technology. And if there's, even if you can shrink that down to the regional level or the the g what we call the GAC level, the geographic area the zone level, if you can shrink that technology down and have those platforms available at each zone that may, may negate the need for manned aerial detection flights during the day. I can see where that would possibly be a, an option for the future.

Bryan 32:31

Mm-hmm. Now this is actually really helpful, especially for entrepreneurs and then investors. A big piece when the entrepreneur comes, says, I'm raising money and these are gonna be my contracts. The investor is saying, Is that really gonna be your contract? Can those people actually sign. So they need to have the platform for you guys to sign the contract. contract. You guys cannot really do an r and d contract. You cannot really sign to develop some technology. But if the technology is developed, then you guys are able to contract. And I guess that could come in two ways. It could be a readiness that we're going to pay you so much to be ready and then maybe stack a little bit per hour of actual operation. Or it could be a. the entrepreneur just has to fit the bill for being ready. And then you guys pay when you call them up. And I know that with, or at least I've been told that for paying for those things, if they're called out reactively, then the federal government will reimburse the expense for that. But if they're just put on the budget, then the local state, county or whatever the regional agencies have to fit the bill for that. What can you, what comments can you give for entrepreneurs on. What that contracting may have to look like. And then also for the investors who are fact checking their entrepreneurs that they're thinking about investing in what can those contracts look like for financing, for paying for these services?

Kane 33:51

Well, and I'll start with saying that there, there's innovation in our business every year as far as contracting goes. so I'm not a hundred percent sure on whether there are, say, r and d contracts available or whether there's funding available for something like that. But theres new pieces of equipment that hit the fire line. Seems like every year that we haven't used in the years. And I think it's just a matter of negotiating rates for that equipment. But again I'm not the best person to talk to about that. That's not my expertise. I'm an operational resource for our organization. I.

Bryan 34:26

Actually that might if you wanna make an introduction, someone who is thick into contracting, they'd probably be stoked that someone actually cares about their job. Cuz contracting is so valuable, but so underappreciated.

Kane 34:37

Yeah, I will I will do my best to come up with somebody and maybe I can get you some contacts emailed and the contracting side of things. I know we do contracts with folks every year. It's an annual thing. It's not something that's new to us. And like I said, I think it's probably just a matter of negotiating those rates for something that you have available. The other thing, would be just trying to, ensure that that's a reimbursable expense. so, for us as a district, if we were to contract something like that, We would need to in advance work through our channels with the folks that fund us, for our fire suppression to make sure that that's an expense that they would consider reimbursing. And, and that would be that way no matter, what organization you're paired up with or working with. But I'm, I'm certainly not saying that it, that you would have to just. Have a piece of developed technology, have it approved and then you could go into the contracting world. Like I said there's certainly ways to, take an idea and develop something and take it and try it out and see if it works. But. Not the, not the person to talk to. Now, I know there was a second part to your earlier question, and that escapes me now, I apologize, but

Bryan 35:46

actually we got into it, which was how do the entrepreneurs bring these contracts, these ideas, their technology, how do they bring'em to you guys and, get a pathway to revenues so the investors are putting money into a company cuz they expect a whole bunch of future revenues to come and that revenue's coming from, You guys, the agencies county, state, Your piece on being reimbursable Could we go a little bit more there? I know there's reactive, reimbursable from the federal government, but then there's reimbursable, I imagine where The state may have a overall budget, and then you guys plan, we're gonna spend at least this much on a continuous detection system. Is the state reimbursing you? Maybe a contracts person is the right person for the allocation of unplanned reimbursement as opposed to reimbursement for planned expense.

Kane 36:37

Sure. And our organization is funded legislatively through Idaho. so we have a certain amount of our funding that comes from the state's dedicated fund, which is based on an assessment that is charged to private, landowners, for that fire protection. It's a, it's a small assessment that each private landowner. Each private timber landowner is assessed, and, then we're also funded through a, a portion of our funding comes from the state's general fund. And those dollars are combined together to make up the, pre suppression response for us, if you will. so that's, that's the funding available to make sure that we are there and available to suppress these fires when they happen.

Bryan 37:15

Can you share approximately what that pre suppression budget is per year?

Kane 37:22

It varies from year to year, and it varies depending on the size of the districts. It can, it could be anywhere from, a, a smaller district may be, three to$400,000. A larger district could be a couple million dollars. It really depends on the amount of, of ground. And, the amount of resources, that are on that district, and traditionally that's based on how much fire that district sees. We've got areas in Idaho that don't get a lot of fire, and we've got areas in Idaho that seem to have lightning rods planted all over the place. And uh, traditionally those areas will be funded to have a higher, suppression response available. And then. In Idaho, with our organization anyway, the actual cost of suppressing, suppressing the fire is reimbursed by the state. so any state or private lands who have, paid in the assessment, the state reimburses us to suppress the fires on those ground.

Bryan 38:19

Okay, that's helpful. so for an entrepreneur building, early detection technology that's gonna have to fit within this budget. And some districts have more money than others. And there's probably those with more money, probably have more interest in early detection cuz they're more prone to burn.

Kane 38:35

And probably the, the place to introduce this technology would be at the state level, that, or the regional level for the forest, if you were working with the forest, just because that gives them a wide area to, to test this technology on and to, glean funding from, if you will. so, if it's at the state level, say in Idaho. And you test that technology. At that point, you're working with the folks that make the decisions on contracting for the state they're working with the legislators. They, they're probably familiar with whether that technology is something that would be considered reimbursable or not. so that's probably the best place to start is at that level.

Bryan 39:17

All right, good. That's one of the things that has been universally agreed among people is trying to go to Washington DC It's not gonna happen. It's gotta come from the state, district, regional level, and expand from there.

Kane 39:30

Sure. Yeah. It, the waters can get pretty muddy the further east of the Mississippi River you go.

Bryan 39:36

And it's under understandable thing too. That's one of the things. I don't wanna just, poke fingers at Washington. when that ship starts moving, it can really move. But trying to turn that ship is a difficult thing for a whole host of reasons that it's easy to criticize from the outside, but when you're inside there's real legitimate reasons why things don't move quick.

Kane 39:53

Right? Yep. Yeah. You know, the. the bigger the gears, the government get, the finer they grind. There would certainly be, uh, ample funding opportunities at the federal level, but it definitely is gonna be a heavier lift to, to get that done, I think.

Bryan 40:08

Yeah, so putting a, I guess, coming back early detection, that's something that we'll have to fit within a relatively predictable state budget or regional budget. and then response. This would be if you're doing tactical surveillance, having drones up in the sky, of course, aerial coordinated and such, or maybe just drones at night to see where the fire's going. That would fall under the active suppression budget, which would then be reimbursed that's the variable piece of the budget gets reimbursed by the state, sometimes federal. Is that, is that a correct bifurcation?

Kane 40:44

Yep. Yep. And, and I don't wanna use the term, uh, blank check, but it's basically at that point, it's not an impact to the zone or the, that's, that's something that's not gonna affect the day-to-day operations or the ability for that organization tomorrow to detect fires better. Um, mm. If that's a, if that's a reimbursable expense. And yeah, I think the the idea of using those aircraft at night, the conflict of manned aircraft at that point is mitigated. In Idaho at least we don't use aircraft on fire after dark. so, um, that would certainly be an excellent place to start, especially just to get your foot in the door. And at that point you could start, developing protocols, working with the aviation folks in the fire industry to develop protocols for utilizing those aircraft during the day.

Bryan 41:30

Yeah, I guess you start with night, well, there's no conflict. And then as people get comfortable with it I think a big piece is just the pilots who are up in the air becoming comfortable with other small objects, maybe even large objects, but other unmanned objects up in the air with them. And that's. Their life's on the line that it's, it's a real thing.

Kane 41:50

Yep. Absolutely. And, uh, I think you'll find it in the fire industry no matter what technology we start to move to the forefront, um, safety will always be the first discussion that we're gonna have about it. And so, I think that that's gonna be one of the the first hurdles that will need to be crossed over is just working out the safety aspects of it. And I think, infrared technology in an unmanned flight after dark is probably a, in my mind, a, a good place to start.

Bryan 42:16

Alright, good to hear. Um, let's go to the incident commander who's authorizing where checks are written, where resources are used during the suppression phase. They don't have that blank check, but. If they're putting drones out, they'd say, I'm, willing to take the risk or the operational overhead, or, staying up overnight. I'm willing to put drones up in the air for surveillance at night when there's minimal conflict in the air and such, and it's gonna cost X dollars to do that. What are the factors that, let's just say get them in trouble. If they spend too much money and they write, write a check, their body can't cash. What, where do they get in trouble? Where are they within their, bounds of safety that they're not gonna get in trouble?

Kane 43:04

Well, so as, as our employee, and a qualified incident commander, they're delegated authority to make those decisions on the fire line. There are certain requests that when they go to dispatch, we'll need approval from somebody who has a higher level of delegated spending authority, um, very large air tanker, loads of retardant. That are, uh, real expensive. Those, you know, those obviously require a certain level of approval, but certainly the incident commander on the ground has the ability to make that request.

Bryan 43:36

Okay, what, kind of dollar sizes are we looking at? Say a 7 37 drop in a bunch of slurry or a type one, dropping a bunch of slurry. I'm interested in slurry verse water. Let's go to that another time. But how much money are we spending for a type one to make a drop? How much money for your type three. What are the ends of the spectrum?

Kane 43:57

To be honest with you, I'm not sure what the rates will be for the type one s. I know I did contract a Black Hawk a couple years ago that was, I think it was around$7,000 an hour that did not pay for its availability. That was just its operating rate. a type three helicopter. You can generally figure you're.$2,000 an hour operating rate for something like that. Um, just depending on the platform that you get. There's, there's a wide variety there, between. Type three and type one helicopters. There's all kinds of aircraft that fit into those niches. And they all, cost different amounts that, as far as something like a heli tank or a sky crane, I really don't know what the hourly rate on that's gonna be this year. But, certainly going to be fairly expensive. so, when you're comparing that cost to something else, it's pretty easy. To justify, the cost of something that costs less per hour.

Bryan 44:50

Yeah. All right, so if an incident commander's making the call, do I send up drones or do I send up manned and we have dollars on this section, dollars on that section? They, have the authority and they're probably not gonna get in too much trouble if they choose the less expensive option, especially if it's half the cost.

Kane 45:07

That's correct. Yeah. You know, we're a very cost conscious organization. We, we like to keep our cost per acre for fire suppression as low as we possibly can. We're cognizant of the fact that we're spending the taxpayers dollars, and we want to do that as, as judiciously as possible.

Bryan 45:24

Now, how about for tactical surveillance? We've talked about suppression and those are big dollars. How much, for eyes in the sky, to see what's going on? Tactically on the ground. We got a crew over here and a crew over here. Winds, conditions change. We're gonna get the fire potentially blowing over. We need to get that crew out of the way because the fire just started moving the wrong direction. Or it jumped a fire line that we had dug Safety again becomes number one.

Kane 45:51

That would be that Air Tactical group supervisor, that air attack that we were discussing earlier. That's one of their functions. When their overhead is functioning as a lookout for those folks that are on the ground, on the fire. And so they provide that aerial reconnaissance for, for those folks. And those platforms are typically, um, a Polatus or a, a Kodiak a Quest, Kodiak, something like that. I'm unfamiliar with what the contract rates are gonna be this year for those aircraft. I'm assuming probably. Three to$5,000 an hour for something like that. Don't quote me. Like I said I've got no idea, but I know charter rates for those aircraft are fairly high, so the contract rate will be as well.

Bryan 46:30

Okay. Well, good. This is why I wanna have multiple conversations cuz we eventually get into what that number is and more people know, or at least they got that ballpark cuz 4,000 an hour versus 400 an hour is, in a ballpark.

Kane 46:44

somebody like, quest Aircraft that contracts, those Kodiak platforms, they would certainly be somebody that you could talk to about that. I'm not sure whether they'd be willing to disclose their rates or not. But, uh, those are the type of folks who provide that service.

Bryan 46:57

My view of the world is that those people who are already providing the service are the starting point for innovating because they have the, the power of incumbency. They already have the contracting stuff solved, just do it better and less expensive. And then they don't have to worry about getting cannibalized by, by some whip start startup, new entrepreneur company. They just maintain dominance and increase their market share.

Kane 47:21

Right. Yeah, absolutely. Win-win for everybody.

Bryan 47:23

Yeah. Yep. Awesome. Um, I think we've covered a lot of ground and this has been really useful. Is there, is there anything that you would want to close on, anything that we just haven't touched on that is gonna be really valuable for investors, for business builders, for other agency leaders?

Kane 47:41

Boy, not in my mind, Brian, but, uh, feel free to reach out anytime you have questions. I'm always happy to try and find a spot in my schedule to sit down and discuss this with you. I think innovation in our industry is certainly very important and it's certainly gonna take input from our operational side, to guide the direction of, the way this goes, so that we can end up with a product that, that we feel is usable on our end. so I appreciate you reaching out and, always happy to help when I can where I can.

Bryan 48:10

Absolutely, as you said, the operational piece, that's what a lot of the conversations have led to. The technology is solvable. The contracting, the regulatory stuff is solvable. There's a path for that and may be grueling and tedious, but it's solvable But the operational uptake is the most important piece to just get that there where you feel comfortable using whatever level of technology you guys choose to bring.

Kane 48:34

Right. Yep. And like I said, that discussion on the, the front end of any of this new implement implementation of technology is always gonna be, first and foremost, the safety factor. And we implement new technology every year in our industry. so I know it's certainly possible, it's just finding the right channels to route that through and having the right input to end up with the product that we're looking.

Bryan 48:57

Great. Well, thank you for sitting down, Kane. This has been very fun, entertaining and useful, so we'll see you again in the future.

Kane 49:04

All right. I appreciate the time. Thanks, Brian. Have a great day.