Using the solution, more than 20 square miles of highly vulnerable green belts, parks and open space that encircle the City are being covered by the network to monitor for fire in real time.

"Our goal is to prevent and minimize wildfires out in the hard-to-spot areas before they can spread and destroy local residences and businesses," said David Horne, founding chair of the Laguna Fire Safe Council and professor of marketing at California State University Long Beach.

"With this network, we will have, for the first time, the ability to monitor the wilderness areas around the Laguna Canyon during high fire danger days and, hopefully, stop any fires before they cause damage to the community."

On October 27, 1993 a fire started in the wilderness of Laguna Canyon Road and sped swiftly to destroy 391 homes, damage 645 others and burn over 16,680 acres in the urban area. Since then, residents and local officials have been concerned that this tragedy could happen again.

They have taken many preventive measures such as brush clearings, trail breaks, and the Red Flag Patrol on days when it is necessary to be extra vigilant.

However, they remained concerned that fires could break out in difficult to spot wilderness areas. As a result, the Laguna Fire Safe Council (formed by residents who lost their homes 15 years ago) applied for and received a federal grant from the Bureau of Land Management and administered by the California Fire Safe Council to build a wireless surveillance network.

The Laguna Council commissioned the Laguna Broadcast Network Wireless Service Provider to build the surveillance network. A year ago, Laguna Broadcast deployed a two camera pilot network on homes on the hillside.

Now with permission from the park commissioner and local permits, they have almost completely deployed a more sophisticated and extensive wireless network using pan, tilt and zoom Sony cameras on collapsible fiberglass poles in the wilderness areas of chaparral, eight to ten feet high tress and scrub that are most vulnerable. The wireless network is backhauled to a solar powered transmitter with battery back up.

During Red Flag conditions the surveillance cameras are monitored by park rangers, public safety and water utility officials. The goal was to complete the surveillance networks in time for the Santa Ana wind fire season and the Council now expects to have the rest of the network completed by the end of November.

"In building the network, our challenge was to make sure that it would be reliable enough to withstand the rugged conditions of the wilderness and Santa Ana winds," said Ryen Caenn, president and co-founder, Laguna Broadcast Networks.

"We chose Tropos because of their proven and tested deployments in cities around the world under all sorts of conditions, including their video surveillance and communications network in New Orleans which survived Hurricane Katrina."

"Fire Watch adds to the wide range of public safety applications that are running on Tropos MetroMesh Wi-Fi networks around the world," said Ron Sege, president and CEO of Tropos. "From police fighting crime, to EMS saving lives and now Laguna Beach staving off disastrous consequences of fierce California wildfires, we are pleased to be a key part of these very valuable and mission-critical solutions."

The community is also contemplating expanding the use of the network to allow local organizations to watch for bobcats, habitat movement and other environmental activities.

PRO 911 Systems provided the installation and partnered with Laguna Broadcast and Tropos Networks on the deployment of the Laguna Surveillance Network.

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