AUSTIN, Texas – As devastating wildfires continue to rage across Southern California, the Austin Fire Department is taking some proactive measures to prepare for the possibility of a similar catastrophe striking closer to home. 

Multiple lives lost, immeasurable destruction, and a community in crisis as the southern California wildfires continue to wreak havoc.

For Austin Fire Department’s Senior Geospatial Analyst Braniff Davis, it’s not a matter of if, but when a devastating wildfire breaks out in the area.

To help stay prepared for a wildfire, the agency uses high-tech mapping from a company called Esri.

What they’re saying:

“We use GIS or geographic information spatial information in order to help prepare the Austin Fire Department for fighting wildfires,” Davis said.

The city of Austin is using their high-tech mapping to improve fire prevention, response and damage assessment.

“It’s a great example of a local government addressing the risk in their community and either preventing or mitigating the risk and being able to respond to it,” Esri’s Director of Fire, Rescue and EMS Mike Cox said.

Big picture view:

Here’s how it works. It all starts with understanding risk, understanding the topography and who is being impacted by the incidents.

“As an example, I can do an analysis in GI and understand how many homes have disabilities within a certain planning zone or how many homes don’t have vehicles based on, you know, with concerns for evacuation, you know, who can self-evacuate and who can’t. So, these kind of data sets are available to these responders, to these agencies to be able to do this kind of planning,” Cox said.

Then, it’s about planning the response through geographic information technology.

First responders can now track firefighter locations, coordinate large-scale search and rescue efforts, and even monitor the movement of responding helicopters in real-time.

“What you’re seeing there is obviously a map with structural footprints. You see those tracks that are laid by the responders as they move through an area, and they’re dropping symbology around damage assessment of homes or evacuations. It’s incredibly important in a command post or an emergency operations center to be able to deploy resources efficiently and put people where they need to be to have the most impact and also to keep our responders out of hazardous areas,” Cox said.

Finally comes the recovery phase.

Esri mapping can identify where the damaged structures are post-fire to help begin the rebuild process.

“The recovery process at a federal level as they start tracking these damage assessments and can start funneling the funding to the right agencies and right people that need the help the most based on this data collection,” said Cox.

Local perspective:

For Davis, he says, while in its early stages, these tools are being used city wide by Austin Fire, with the hope for all other first responding agencies to utilize them in the future.

In the meantime, he says all AFD firefighters are being trained on how to use the situational awareness platform ahead of the next wildfire. 

The goal, he says, is to get resources out to a fire as soon as it happens. 

“Once we can get everybody all their data into this platform, then it just becomes a seamless one-stop shop for every bit of information you need for an emergency situation,” Davis said.

Dig deeper:

More information on Austin’s Wildfire Hub can be found here: Wildfire

More on Esri: GIS Software for Mapping and Spatial Analytics | Esri

AUSTIN (KXAN) — A vacant structure in south Austin caught fire Saturday evening, according to the Austin Fre Department. This was located in the 7800 block of Peaceful Hill Lane, near the intersection of West William Cannon Drive and South Congress Avenue.

A large plume of smoke could be seen from all over Austin around 6:00 P.M.

AFD said crews were able to extinguish the fire at 7:00 p.m. In addition to the structure, an 18-wheeler and tire piles also caught on fire.

The Austin active fire incident page said the call for the fire came in just before 6:00 p.m.

AFD told KXAN that no one was inside the structure and there were no reported injuries.

This is a developing story. Check back with KXAN.com for updates.

AUSTIN, Texas — U.S. Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, has introduced a bill that would move headquarters for the United States Customs and Border Patrol to Texas.  

Self posed the question on X, formerly Twitter, asking “Why is the agency responsible for securing the border 2,000 miles away from the border?”

The proposed bill would move U.S. Customs and Border Patrol headquarters from Washington, D.C. to the Lone Star State. 

“Doing so will be cost-effective and critical to bringing President Trump’s fight to the border,” Self said.

“This proposal fits a broader pattern that President Trump engaged in during his first term of trying to decentralize the federal government,” said Mark Jones, a Rice University professor of political science.

Relocating Border Patrol headquarters is part of President-elect Donald Trump’s larger plan to relocate thousands of federal employees.

“As many as 100,000 government positions can be moved out. And I mean immediately out of Washington to places filled with patriots who love America,” Trump said.

During his first term, Trump moved the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service to Kansas City, Missouri, and the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado. Jones says he isn’t confident Self’s bill will become law, but if it does, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott could benefit.

“It’s one thing to propose moving an agency outside of the D.C. metro area to another state. It’s another thing to actually do so in practice, in part because so many of the employees will not want to move,” Jones said. “This fits very well with his belief that Texas and the state should be playing a more active role in border security. Having Customs and Border Patrol here in Texas would, I think, be a natural fit from the perspective of the governor.”

Recently, Abbott authorized dozens of billboards across South America and Mexico to stop border crossings.

“We will work with the Trump administration to deport them,” said Abbott.

Self says his bill “will allow America’s Border Patrol agents to be on the ground at the critical point of the crisis.”

But an Austin-based immigration attorney calls the proposed move an action to garner attention but believes it won’t affect determined asylum seekers.

“If we were to expand legal immigration options, temporary work programs, ways for people to access asylum protections without having to be at the border, then we would see a lot of this immigration along the border with Mexico go down,” Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch said.

If passed, Kristi Noem, Trump’s nominee for secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, will be required to work with Texas to select an area “strategically placed” to address border security.