Partnering for Resiliency: Fire Departments and Tech That Works
Fire Aside CEO Jason Brooks’ recent presentation on technical innovation to fire leadership might be summarized in two words: collaboration and iteration.
Brooks recently told a virtually-assembled webinar audience hosted by the Western Fire Chiefs Association the story of our company and our early collaboration with the Central Marin Fire Department (California). That partnership eventually expanded to include Vail Fire-Rescue (Colorado), along with over 100 agencies across 12 states as of this year.
What does this joint effort mean in practice? It means relaying real-world scenarios from your agency to a tech partner like Fire Aside in order to achieve better results – more resident compliance with inspections, and ultimately, greater resiliency to wildfire.
“When it comes to wildfire, so much of what needs to happen is on private property,” Brooks said.
“Private homeowners need to take action. So how can we make it as cost-effective as possible for the fire service to help the members of their community?”
In his hour-long talk, Brooks explained that it has been critical to partner with real-world practitioners like Todd Lando, a Battalion Chief and Wildfire Hazard Mitigation Specialist at the Central Marin Fire Department.
Lando and his team worked together with Fire Aside to create a software-based inspection tool that dramatically improved upon the paper-based processes that existed previously.
“We were using 100-year-old technology in an era when that was no longer feasible and we were losing out on a huge amount of actionable data going forward,” he said.
Similarly, Paul Cada, Wildland Program Manager for Vail Fire and Emergency Services, explained that his agency had built its own inspection tool, but noted that it was cumbersome and clunky.
"It really took quite a bit of back-end administrative time from not just the fire department, from our town IT staff, our GIS staff – that was really a fairly large lift,” he said.
“It was really hard to analyze the data in efficient ways. We definitely found the limits of our homegrown tech.”
Fire Aside was able to meet and exceed Vail’s needs, Cada added.
“I’m probably one of the worst people that a tech vendor can try to sell to. I’m super cynical. Knowing what we had already in place was super valuable and validating. What Fire Aside was coming to us and saying what they could do – I could compare it directly to what we were already doing. Not only could it do what we were doing, but what could it do that we were not already doing?”
More recently, Fire Aside has continued to innovate, most recently adding an AI tool that can automatically recognize vegetation and provide a recommended identification to on-ground inspectors, saving them further time.
Brooks also emphasized how Fire Aside works offline – including in spotty or no cell coverage areas.
“You have these situations where it needs to be transparent to the field users,” he said. “The device will always call home when it can but it’s designed to operate locally otherwise.”
In summary:
Work Together: Fire Aside partnered with numerous fire agencies to understand real-world workflows before building any solutions.
Simplify and Automate: With Fire Aside, multi-step, paper-heavy inspections are now replaced by efficient, consistent processes that can be measured and evaluated by residents and policymakers alike.
Field-Ready Tools: AI guidance and offline capability keep inspections accurate and uninterrupted.
Control Your Data: GIS and historical data stay in your agency’s hands — there’s never any vendor lock-in.
Keep Improving: Feedback, training, and updates continuously improve the app’s effectiveness, and boost efficiency, quality, and morale of your team.