Wildfires devastate communities, ecosystems, and lives, and they are becoming harder to stop. But what if firefighters could spot a blaze in its earliest moments, before anyone even calls 911?

In this episode of Tools and Weapons, Brad Smith travels to California to meet Deputy Fire Chief Zachary Wells and Dr. Neal Driscoll, a professor at the University of California, San Diego and one of the leaders behind ALERTCalifornia, an ambitious early warning and situational awareness system designed to detect wildfires as quickly as possible.