Community Corner

Big Rock Community Uses Goats, Technology to Combat Wildfires

When a wildfire demolished the home of the Broussard family in 1993, it had a profound impact on then-8-year-old Shea. Now he's partnered with a retired firefighter to create a map that he believes will change how fires are fought.

Goats grazing on an open field overlooking the Pacific Ocean near the top of the Big Rock community in Malibu look like a scene out of a pastoral painting.

But the goats, which come from nearby Topanga, are grazing with a purpose: to protect the community of more than 250 homes from wildfires. 

Corralled by a portable electric fence, the goats are part of a deliberate plan by the Big Rock Homeowners Association to manage the thick brush that covers the Santa Monica Mountains in the hope to protect their homes against the next inevitable fire. A total of 80 goats and six sheep will ultimately work on the project.

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The goats, which are big enough to fight off coyotes, were not placed randomly.

Using Google Earth technology as an interactive map, Shea Broussard, whose father is the president of Big Rock’s homeowners association, and his business partner Tony Shafer, a retired LA City firefighter, developed a wildfire forecasting program called FlameMapper.

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“It allows us to get the most out of the goats by strategically placing [the goats] with the use of GPS devices and it is far more effective and environmentally sustainable than past weed abatement methods,” Broussard, 26, said. 

The interactive map, which has the option to show historic wildfires all the way back to the early 1900s, generates various wildfire simulation models including fire paths, rate of spread, and flame lengths all in the Google Earth interface.

Al Broussard, Shea’s father, said that he hopes the local goats will chew a swath of about 100 acres over the next several months. The association brought in goats from Texas nearly 10 years ago, but they did not eat the most flammable of the chaparral species; Laure Sumac. 

“We’re going to try using the local goats for one month. We have budgeted for 20 weeks,” he said. The grazing animals are preferable to hand crews tearing out the brush because when the goats eat, they shred the vegetation, making it more difficult for the vegetation to grow back.

“These goats love Sumac, that’s one of the big fire hazards we have,” Al Broussard said.

He added that the combined effort of the FlameMapper technology and the goats has empowered the community to protect itself. 

“Even though we live in a fire area, there are things that we can do,” the elder Broussard said. “We want to clear the brush to save lives and property, not just for the sake of clearing brush, or a better ocean view.”

At the age of 8, after picking through the charred remains of what was left of his home, Shea Broussard said the 1993 fire had a profound impact on him. The destructive flames sparked a dream of growing up to become a firefighter.

Broussard, a Fire Explorer with the L.A. County Fire Department for seven years, evolved his dream into developing a real-time mapping application to forecast wildfires, he said. 

Broussard decided to take a full ride to the University of California Los Angeles, but he never gave up on his dream to fight fires. He developed FlameMapper while studying for his masters degree in Geographic Information Systems & Science along with Tony Shafer.

“My goal is for FlameMapper to be used by not only firefighters but, more importantly, stakeholders and the general public, so they can better understand the risk of fire,” Broussard said.

He hopes the Wild Fire Flame Mapper will eventually be used throughout the nation, for a licensing fee.

For now, Broussard and Shafer are introducing the technology through the Big Rock GoatMapper project, in hopes that it will spark interest and awareness of the resource.

“We’re using the goats, and by strategically using them to stop the major fire paths,” Shea Broussard explained, pointing to the interactive Google Earth map.

Shafer, who met Shea Broussard in a class, believes that the simple interface of Google Earth will allow firefighters and the public to see firefighting on a different level.

“Unfortunately, current fire protection methods focus on the individual ‘parcel level,' where instead the research shows that this effort collectively would be more effective if focused on the ‘landscape level’ or community level instead,” Shafer said.

The program, which for now is limited to the Santa Monica Mountains, can also create accurate models that show which direction a live fire will travel, with between 60 to 90 percent accuracy.

“I think I am confident that this actually is going to help. I think it will help fight fires and what is exciting is that Tony and I will be able to utilize our sophisticated fire simulation models to prove it,” Broussard said.

He hopes to map the entire world’s fire trends in the next 15 years.

Log on to FlameMapper.com/BigRock to learn more about the project.


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