In July 2021, California experienced its second-largest wildfire in history – the Dixie fire. It ignited in the dense forest of Plumas County, and in the weeks and months that followed, it burned through more than 963,000 acres across five counties, destroying 1,300 structures and leveling the town of Greenville.

In the past three years, the U.S. government has set aside nearly $3.3 billion for the bolstering and modernization of our nation’s wildland firefighting capabilities. These funds have arrived at a critical point in time as government agencies face the compounding effects of climate change that are contributing to longer

In our last article on The Last Mile, we sat down with Greg Albrecht – medic and goTenna Public Safety Technical Consultant – to discuss the conditions and impacts lack of communications and connectivity have on first responders in natural disaster environments. This week, Greg returns to discuss the critical

“In terms of knowing exactly where our wildland firefighters are, that’s currently a very rare thing we’re able to do.” — Brad Schmidt, Wildland Fire Project Manager, Colorado Center of Excellence for Advanced Technology Aerial Firefighting quoted on KKCO News in 2020. Radios in use today haven’t changed much since

In a previous post on The Last Mile, we looked at some of the large technology trends that are poised to get funding across the nation and transform firefighting in 2022. I also discussed how the Biden Administration – seeing the increased frequency and severity of incredibly damaging wildfires –

In a list of the most devastating and destructive years for wildland fires since 1960, the worst five years in terms of acreage burned have all occurred within the past decade and a half. That means that we’re living in a time of more frequent, more deadly, and more devastating

When the Android Tactical Assault Kit (ATAK) was released a decade ago, its situational awareness and communications capabilities completely transformed how military, law enforcement, and emergency response teams coordinate and communicate during their missions. For more than 10 years, ATAK has been enabling any warfighter with an Android device to

In today’s increasingly network-enabled, digitally-transformed government, one of the greatest resources that the government has at its disposal is data. As David Egts, the Chief Technologist for North America Public Sector at Red Hat recently explained in an interview, “It’s clear that data has the power to revolutionize the government.

Whether it’s from tight budgets or a lack of personnel, federal agencies have long struggled to accomplish incredibly important, massive missions because of a lack of resources. These inadequate resources have had dire consequences for Americans in the past – impacting agencies’ abilities to inspect food processing plants, and even

Last month, goTenna – the world’s leading mobile mesh networking company and provider of off-grid connectivity solutions for smartphones and other devices – participated in Tough Stump’s Tech Rodeo, an off-grid communications field test hosted by Tough Stump Technologies and Skybridge Tactical. The goal of the Tech Rodeo was to test ATOS,