(TNS) — The Marin County Sheriff’s Office is getting ready to launch a new “unmanned aerial systems” program.

Sheriff’s Capt. David Augustus steered away from using the word “drone” when talking about the program, set to begin in 60 to 90 days.

“I don’t like that word,” Augustus said. “Drones have an inference of military surveillance or weaponry. That’s not what these are.”

As blame for California’s wildfires rises over Sacramento like smoke from last year’s blazes, the state is being forced to confront the possibility that it’ll happen again in 2018.

California’s drought is worsening, and blazes have charred more acres in the first six months of this year than they did in the same period in 2017, a year that ultimately set records for destruction and deaths. The state is covered with dried-out brush and the skeletal branches of 129 million trees killed by a bark-beetle infestation. Hundreds of miles of electric transmission lines run through the dead forests and crisscross hills crowned with golden, dried grass.

Recovery of a region after disaster is measured by the return to normalization, and that is reliant, in large part, on the business community re-establishing itself.

It’s not always easy after a disaster, and many small businesses never recover. Dun & Bradstreet is well-quipped to use data and analysis to help cities and states develop resilience as demonstrated with its recent economic analysis after Hurricane Matthew.

The firm was approached by Michael Sprayberry, North Carolina’s director of emergency management, to conduct an economic impact analysis after the hurricane hit the region in 2016.

The passenger rail cars on an Amtrak train that derailed near Seattle, Wash. last December, killing three people, were allowed by federal regulators to stay in service even though they didn’t meet current crash-protection standards, federal investigators said Tuesday.

The Talgo Inc. cars had to be specially modified to make them sturdier in a collision, but they still didn’t meet crash standards adopted in 1999 by the U.S. Federal Railroad Administration, according to newly released documents from the National Transportation Safety Board.

It seems like news of disastrous wildfires never ends. Last winter, we watched as wildfires raged in Santa Barbara County, California. Once contained, the fires then led to catastrophic mudslides that killed 20 people around Montecito, California.

The recent Western wildfires that have been burning in Colorado and California are attributed to multiple factors, including a heat wave and climate change.

California Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation to requires insurance companies to let homeowners know whether their policies are sufficient to rebuild or replace their homes after a disaster.

Assembly Bill 1799, by Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-Marin County, addresses consumer protection and underinsurance issues uncovered by the devastating 2017 wildfire season.

California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones has issued an order directing every insurer licensed to write workers’ compensation insurance in the state must report their federal income tax savings annually through a rate filing in light of the new tax law.

The recent revision to the Federal Tax Schedule for 2018 reduced the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. That means that nationally insurers will now be able to retain even more of policyholder premiums as profit.

(TNS) - More can be done in Sausalito to protect residents against fire, according to a survey of residents.

The survey was taken in recent weeks with the start of fire season and in the wake of last year’s North Bay fires and more local conflagrations, including one that burned along Highway 101 on the Waldo Grade last October.

Much of Sausalito is on tree-lined hills, and fire danger is a worry.

“The survey was designed to assess the level of concern in our community,” Chris Tubbs, chief of the Southern Marin Fire Protection District, told the City Council last week as he presented the survey. “There is a high level concern about the threat among residents. They think we should be doing more.”

Amazon has made its entry into the surveillance business with a facial recognition system, Rekognition. The product is geared towards law enforcement use, and has already been used in select police departments around the country.

The AI-based program can track, identify and analyze people in real-time. It is powerful enough to identify up to 100 people in a single image and scan the information quickly against databases.

California is on track to have what will be the nation’s most far-reaching law to give consumers more control over their personal data.

The new law may be both a big concern, as well as a new and important opportunity, for the insurance industry.