SUMMIT COUNTY, Utah — A new artificial intelligence tool could be helping local fire departments near you.
The North Summit Fire District is utilizing the PANO AI wildfire detection camera system to help with early fire detection in remote areas.
On Friday morning, Battalion Chief Tyler Rowser said with the help of the PANO AI system, they were able to get to a remote fire on Lewis Peak before activity could increase.
“We don’t pay for it, it’s privately funded, so they allow us access to it, our dispatch center to it,” Rowser said. "The nice thing about this system is it does early detection. The one it got on Friday it was a single tree. Being here in town, we got no calls about this.”
He says AI detects the smoke, contacts a real person to confirm, then sends an alert to the local agencies.
“Just looking at the camera view, you can see the dead vegetation around it. It would have had plenty to start burning, had that fire grown into something more,” Rowser added.
Rowser said they’ve been utilizing these cameras for about a year now and it helps them respond faster and coordinate with the right personnel.
People in Coalville are aware of the changing technology and are glad to see it helping firefighters.
Thomas W. Moore, a former fire warden and now business owner, said it used to be a lot different when he was fighting fires.
Times are changing for some of Utah’s rural mountain towns.
“There were people manning fire towers. Most of my wildland fires were called in by commercial airliners… so we had an early big plane spotting our fires,” Moore said.
He said the landscape of the town has changed too.
“Back in them days, there wasn’t many people around here, and then all of a sudden in the last 20 years, we’ve had subdivisions grow and got more exposure to the mountains and all the things that could happen,” Moore said.
Living in the area his whole life, he said Utah’s weather has always played a role in the wildfire season. That’s why he stays prepared with bins of fire extinguishers and gallons of water near his cabin.
So far in 2026, there have been more than 500 wildfires in the state, but because of the AI technology, people in Summit County are hopeful that early detection will help stop the spread of more.
