By Fiona Breen
Publication Date: 2026-01-11 18:23:00
It’s a hot day in early December and the Tasmanian winds are blowing fiercely.
Firefighting crews are overstretched, with fires burning in both Dolphin Sands and St. Helens on the east coast.
They are cleaning up in Dolphin Sands, where 19 houses have been destroyed, but the fire is still burning in St Helens.
Suddenly, a remote-controlled camera with artificial intelligence detects a tiny cloud of smoke a few kilometers away near St. Mary’s, in the middle of the tinder-dry bush.
The cameras came to the rescue as firefighters battled a blaze near St Helens in early December. (ABC News: Meg Whitfield)
It’s 8:30 in the morning. An alarm sounds and the real-time images are checked before the fire department is alerted.
A helicopter will then be deployed from the scene of the fire in St Helens to the exact coordinates to extinguish the flames.
Two hours passed from the first alarm to the deletion.
For the tired firefighters still working on the coast, a fire disaster has been averted.
The cameras were developed by Indicium Dynamics, a software company…
