Teams from two Bay Area climate technology startups are in the Southern California fire zone, using their technology to help first responders detect fires and track winds more accurately. Vasya Tremsin, CEO of San Francisco-based Torch Sensors, says he is rushing to install high-tech fire monitors in Tarzana. The devices are designed to detect a fire within three minutes of igniting. “We took the concept of a smoke alarm and brought it outdoors. We also have infrared cameras, spectral analysis, gas sensing, temperature and humidity sensing, and AI  to detect a fire really early on,” Tremsin said. He said the information could be critical, especially in areas where members can quickly start a fire and in evacuation zones where no one is around to report them. “We are just trying to put sensors up in any of the at-risk areas that can catch embers,” Tremsin said. Early in the firefight, winds in the Palisaded topped 80 miles an hour, and high winds are still a concern. That is why Jackson Yip, founder of Paladin Industries and a San Jose State University fire weather researcher, said he is working to deploy his technology to forecast winds more accurately. “So, in these places where we have very little data, our model has been trained to predict the winds in those areas to be more accurate and give firefighters an edge when it comes to fighting fires in complex and windy terrain,” Yip said. Yip added that his company is working with a meteorologist assigned to the Southern California fires to provide critical data to determine where fire crews should go and how to keep them safe. “So when fire detection occurs, we are looking to model the first 8 hours more accurately so we know which neighborhoods are at risk and needing evacuation and where suppression efforts should go immediately,” he said. Despite both companies fine-turning their technologies, both founders hope their data can make a difference.