One Year Later: From Emergency Radio to WyldSafe

# One Year Later: From Emergency Radio to WyldSafe

*January 2026*

A year ago this week, I was sitting in my home in Thousand Oaks, glued to Broadcastify.

It was January 7th, 2025. The Palisades fire had already been burning for hours. Then the Eaton fire ignited in Altadena. I listened to multiple radio feeds simultaneously—the same skill I'd taught myself after the 2018 Woolsey fire nearly took my family's house.

For the next 72 hours straight, I didn't sleep.

## January 7th, Overnight

Nineteen people died in the Eaton fire that night. The evacuation orders came hours too late.

I was one of 2,000 people listening to the Broadcastify feeds as the neighborhood west of Lake Blvd burned. An address was called in over the radio every few minutes with no response from fire crews who were overwhelmed further up the hill.

At 2:34am, three hours after it became obvious the situation was out of control, an evacuation order finally went out. By then, each burning house had become the ignition point for the next.

I found myself coordinating with other Broadcastify listeners, relaying real-time information to people evacuating across LA and Ventura counties. For six more days, we worked in shifts to help track new fires and evacuation zones.

## What Can I Actually Do?

For months afterward, every conversation came back to the fires. Family, school pickup, friends around the world who had lived it alongside us online.

One question kept coming up: *What can I actually do to protect my house?*

Sprinklers were something everyone was talking about. I started looking into who had already been working on this problem and found Embers Protection Services, a company that manufactures fully automated sprinkler systems with satellite communications. They had a 100% success rate in the Palisades and Franklin fires. Houses with their systems didn't burn.

By May 2025, I'd signed on as CTO to help scale their technology. I led a team to build a zero-trust AWS-native cloud platform from scratch—the infrastructure that monitors and controls systems protecting some of the most valuable homes in Southern California.

## Not Everyone Can Install a $50,000 Sprinkler System

The Embers solution is the best you can get if you want to protect a high-value property. But what about the family in Altadena who just wants to know if their wood shake roof is a death sentence? What about the homeowner in the Conejo Valley who doesn't know that the ornamental junipers against their house are basically fire accelerant?

The biggest need wasn't more hardware. It was better information, from trusted sources, delivered early and regularly.

## Why I Built WyldSafe

In November 2025, I filed a provisional patent for an AI-powered wildfire risk assessment. On January 2nd, 2026—three days before the one-year anniversary of the fires—WyldSafe launched.

You walk around your property recording video. Our AI analyzes hundreds of frames against fire science standards: defensible space zones, building materials, vegetation types, structural vulnerabilities. You get a detailed report with prioritized recommendations and cost estimates.

The hard cost per assessment is $10. We're offering them free to homeowners through our partners.

## The Old Model Is Dead

For most of my 30 years in the Conejo Valley, I watched wildfire treated as the government's problem. Cal Fire would come, insurance would pay (usually), and we'd rebuild.

The insurance crisis made it clear that's over. State Farm left. Allstate left. The FAIR Plan became the only option for millions of Californians, and it's not designed for this scale.

California's new Sustainable Insurance Strategy requires insurers to recognize mitigation. Colorado just passed HB 1182 with the same mandate. The regulatory environment is finally catching up to what fire survivors have known all along: you cannot outsource your survival.

WyldSafe gives people the exact information they need to take an active role in their own safety. Not to replace professional assessment and installation, but to make the knowledge accessible that's been locked away in expensive consultations and opaque insurance algorithms.

## What's Next

This week, I'm joining the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of California to bring these tools to insurance professionals statewide. We're building partnerships with CAL FIRE's Defensible Space Inspection Program, Ventura County Fire Department fuel reduction programs, and local Firewise USA communities.

The Wyldfire Foundation—our 501(c)(3) arm—is working to make hardening accessible to families who can't afford it, regardless of income.

I have a personal relationship with fire. It's a natural part of these lands. Fire has always been here. The question is whether we learn to live with it intelligently, or keep pretending someone else will save us.

One year ago, I listened to a neighborhood burn because information didn't flow fast enough. I'm building the infrastructure to make sure that doesn't happen again.

---

*Nate Siggard is the founder of WyldSafe and a 30-year Conejo Valley resident. He survived the 2018 Woolsey fire and spent 72 hours straight coordinating emergency communications during the January 2025 LA fires.*