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County GIS team outlines ambulance travel maps and wildfire detection updates
Summary
County GIS staff presented ambulance travel-distance maps, CWPP public meeting progress and a proposed Rock Creek fire-detection camera with AI smoke detection; commissioners and chiefs discussed implications for EMS boundaries, subdivision review and water-supply requirements for new development.
Tom, Carbon County’s GIS coordinator, briefed commissioners Aug. 5 on recent GIS work, emergency-service mapping and wildland-fire planning.
Tom said a travel-distance analysis from the county’s three ambulance stations shows 0–5, 6–10 and 10–15 mile bands, and that the analysis could inform ambulance and road-district boundary realignments to improve response efficiency. He noted differences in staffing between full-time-staffed stations (for example in Red Lodge) and volunteer stations that affect response times, and said the county can now evaluate service areas by drive distance rather than older legal district boundaries.
On wildfire planning, Tom reviewed a Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) draft that has had one public meeting (sparsely attended) and chapters 2–8 drafted; the next public meeting will follow completion of the draft and the plan will be published as a public-facing story map. Tom also reported progress on arranging a high-elevation fire-detection camera at Rock Creek with Northwestern Energy; the camera includes AI smoke-column detection that could alert dispatch to a smoke column within roughly a 10-mile radius when permitted.
Commissioners and fire chiefs discussed the need for clearer subdivision review templates for fire control and prevention plans, consistent expectations across chiefs about mitigation (e.g., tanks, water supply, grading), and how the county might standardize review criteria and templates to reduce inconsistent submissions. Tom and commissioners said GIS could support decisionmaking around road and fire-risk scoring for future subdivisions.
Tom closed by reviewing burn-permit statistics (majority human-caused ignitions, mainly debris/open burning and equipment use) and noted that the county had burned comparatively few acres in the recent reporting period.
