Google doles out $3M to Pasadena Unified, gives students early look at wildfire tracking tech

PASADENA, Calif. (KABC) -- In the days after wildfires tore through Southern California, Google committed $15 million to help the affected communities rebuild, and on Wednesday $3 million of that commitment was doled out to the Pasadena Unified School District.

Five of the district's schools were lost in the Eaton Fire.

"We really believe in investing in education and helping you build for the future to help yourselves, to help your community and to help so many others that can be really positively impacted by technology in their lives," said Adam Stewart, Google's Vice President of Sales, addressing students at Pasadena High School.

Google also donated 3,000 Chromebook computers to the district to replace those lost in the flames.

District officials say 827 of its students lost their homes, and many left their school-issued laptops behind when they evacuated.

"This donation... helps all of you, students and teachers, stay connected and supports your continuity of learning," said Jennifer Hall Lee, the school board's president.

But while the millions donated will help the district recover, another Google endeavor could actually help prevent wildfires from ever happening.

The company on Wednesday explained to students at Pasadena High School how it is partnering with the Earth Fire Alliance to advance its FireSat project.

Just launched last month, a satellite is now circling the earth, detecting and tracking wildfires. The project's goal: discover fires when they are only the size of a standard classroom.

"Spotting them small, firefighters can respond and take care of it when it's much easier and minimize the damage," explained Erica Brand, who heads up Google Research's Applied Science division.

Brand says the Earth Fire Alliance hopes to eventually have 52 FireSat satellites orbiting Earth in the next few years. With artificial intelligence, they'll be able to scan the entire surface of the planet every 20 minutes.

"Using A.I. and updating every 20 minutes, it will know what everything looked like before and know what the changes were," Brand said. "That will give firefighters and environmental scientists the most useful information they could get."

The Earth Fire Alliance is slated to launch three more of the FireSat satellites next year.