|
Santa Clara County FireSafe Council Highlights Ladris Modeling Behind Full-Scale Portola Valley Evacuation Exercise
San Jose, CA — September 2, 2026 — Santa Clara County FireSafe Council (SCCFSC) today highlighted the use of Ladris Technologies’ fire and evacuation models in the full-scale, multi-agency evacuation exercise the Woodside Fire Protection District will conduct in Portola Valley on September 11, 2026. SCCFSC is an authorized partner reseller of Ladris and offers the platform to agencies throughout Santa Clara County and the surrounding region.
The September exercise simulates a grass fire ignition at Buck Meadows in the Los Trancos area under Labor Day weekend conditions, then proceeds as a real incident would: a 9-1-1 call, wildland response, establishment of incident command, and initiation of evacuation notifications based on fire behavior and modeling.
The modeling for this exercise is provided by Ladris Core, pairing high-speed wildfire spread simulation with full evacuation simulation on the same road network. Ladris resolves wind, terrain, and fuels into a spread projection in seconds, then accounts for population, vehicle ownership, and time of day, and returns estimated clearance times and egress route saturation. WFPD has pre-calculated these fire spread and evacuation projections for the September 11 scenario and will compare them against real exercise performance in a structured multi-agency debrief.
"During a wildfire, the sequence and timing of evacuation orders must be precise. Seeing where a fire is now is simple — with Ladris Core, emergency managers can see where it will go next and how much time is left before it arrives,” said Seth Schalet, CEO, Santa Clara County FireSafe Council. “Ladris then measures how long an evacuation will take depending on when it’s ordered and how it’s staggered. With these synchronized evacuation and fire models, the Woodside Fire Protection District has tested a wildfire evacuation scenario in advance to compare with exercise results.”
Residents participating in the exercise will also utilize Sentinel, a free public-facing preparedness app from Ladris Ready PBC. Sentinel provides location-specific fire incident and zone status updates, as well as fire spread forecasts for active incidents across the US. Sentinel by Ladris is available for no cost on the App and Google Play stores.
Participating agencies on September 11th include WFPD, San Mateo County Sheriff's Office, CAL FIRE, Redwood City Fire Department, Menlo Park Fire Protection District, San Mateo County Department of Emergency Management, PG&E, California Water Service, the Town of Portola Valley, WPV-CERT, WPV-Ready, Portola Valley Amateur Radio Club, San Mateo County Large Animal Evacuation Group, and the Portola Valley Emergency Preparedness Committee. Exercise details are available at https://www.woodsidefire.org/our-district/district-overview/evacuation-exercise.
Agencies interested in the Ladris platform can contact SCCFSC at sschalet@sccfiresafe.org or Ladris at sales@ladris.com.
####
About Santa Clara County FireSafe Council
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a 20-year history, Santa Clara County FireSafe Council's core mission is to mobilize the people of Santa Clara County to protect their homes, communities, and environment from wildfires. A trusted partner across the government, fire service, corporate and WUI residential communities, SCCFSC has led some of the most complex hazardous fuel reduction projects in the region. With a board of directors and advisory board that has deep expertise across the wildfire ecosystem — including wildfire and environmental research, academia, emergency management, regional planning, technology solutions and wildland firefighting leadership — Santa Clara County FireSafe Council is uniquely positioned to lead cross-sector collaborations and government-private partnerships in Silicon Valley, Santa Clara County and beyond. For more information, visit https://sccfiresafe.org/.
About Ladris
Founded in 2019, Ladris builds fire, flood, and evacuation modeling for planners, responders, and the communities they serve. The platform spans Core for planning, Prime for live incident decision support, and Sentinel, delivered free to the public through Ladris Ready, its public benefit company. Nearly 6 million residents live inside Ladris-modeled jurisdictions today. Learn more at www.ladris.com and ladrisready.org.
Media Contacts
Seth Schalet: sschalet@sccfiresafe.org
media@ladris.com
| 
