Скачать или смотреть Colorado will patrol its forests and grasslands with two new wildfire-spotting aircraft this summer,

(16 May 2015) Colorado will patrol its forests and grasslands with two new wildfire-spotting aircraft this summer, hoping to find and snuff out flames before they explode into the deadly mega-fires that have plagued the state in the past.
Infrared cameras aboard the planes are so sensitive that one of them detected a campfire with six people sitting around it from 28,000 feet in the air during a training flight, state fire management officer Joe LoBiondo said.
The planes were put on display Friday at their home base at Centennial Airport in the south Denver area. The single-engine Pilatus PC-12 aircraft, about the size of a business plane, can reach any part of the state in about 40 minutes, said Michael Woolley, operations manager for Bode Aviation, which has a contract to provide pilots and maintain the state-owned planes
The state bought and equipped the planes for $9 million, Colorado Fire Prevention and Control Director Paul Cooke said.
The 2012 High Park fire killed one person, destroyed 259 houses and burned about 135 square miles near Fort Collins. The Waldo Canyon fire of the same year killed two people, destroyed 347 houses and burned about 29 square miles in the Colorado Springs area.
Colorado lawmakers initially proposed buying tanker aircraft to supplement the fleet that federal agencies use to drop water and fire-retardant slurry on fires, Cooke said. But state officials concluded that spotter aircraft would be a better investment, he said.
Aerial infrared cameras have long been employed to map wildfires during low-altitude night flights, but using them in the daytime to spot startup fires from high altitude is new.
Federal officials said they didn't know of any other states using similar technology.
This will be their first season in use.

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