Prince William teen creates website for risk assessment after 2024 wildfires
By Randy Arrington
STANLEY, July 14 — On Monday, Devin Wanchoo made the trip from Gainesville to present Stanley Volunteer Fire Department President Terry Pettit with his completed Eagle Scout project. The year-long effort by the Prince William County boy scout was sparked by the wildfires that scorched more than 7,200 acres in the Page Valley in March of 2024.
“The goal of the project was to give first responders a better idea of what they are going into,” Wanchoo told PVN this week.
The teenaged member of Boy Scout Troop 581 created a computer program and website that first responders can use to determine the location of homes and a complete risk assessment, including the type of structure, the number of stories, the type of materials in the structure, the type of roof, and other fuel sources nearby that present hazards like propane tanks. The site also provides a “live fire map” through other sources like Firewise USA produced by the National Fire Protection Association. If no internet service is available in remote areas, firefighters can even download a PDF report from the program before heading out to the fire’s location.
Specifically, Wanchoo focused on mapping and logging information about homes in Skyland Lakes. This subdivision includes between 50 to 60 homes in rugged terrain on the mountainside near the top of Tanner’s Ridge, not far from the boundary for Shenandoah National Park.
“I’m so proud of Devon, to do this, to take it on himself,” Pettit said on Monday. “We have subdivisions like Skyland Lakes, and we trust that older members [of the fire department] know where the houses are, but the new members do not know… and the county EMS, who are brought into the county for jobs, they don’t have any idea where these places are located. This is going to help immensely.”
During the course of his research in the field, the Scout discovered and logged 32 homes and structures that were not previously identified on the county’s GIS system.
“It surprised me when we went that there were that many not on the county GIS system,” Pettit said, “but it’s secluded…some are empty, but it’s still a structure that we have to protect.”
The program and website is designed so that new areas and homes may be added to the database in the future. Pettit plans to share the site with other first responders and agencies in the county to expand its effectiveness locally.
“That’s my hope, that we can take what he has done, take this project and broaden it out, add to it, with county EMS and others.,” Pettit said. “I can look at this right now, and if we get a fire, I know what type of house it is, what’s around it right now. I know what it’s made of, and I know if there’s a fuel tank nearby.”
After taking an AP computer science course, the rising junior at Osborn Park High School in Manassas not only created the program and website and logged in the initial data, but he also secured a one-year free membership to Wix (the platform and host the site was created on) and raised more than $2,000 through a GoFundMe page for the future maintenance and upkeep of the website.
Although he leaned on online instructional videos and a little help from dad to get through the coding and website setup, the Prince William teenager did the lion’s share of the work himself, including an on-site drive through Skyland Lakes on a Sunday afternoon with Pettit.
“It was a huge learning curve for me,” Wanchoo said. “Learning how to work with the code and learning how to work with the website, and in an area I was unfamiliar with. The toughest part was learning about the area. There were lot of emails back-and-forth, familiarizing myself with the area.”
Soon, he will hand over his final paperwork for the project to his Scout leaders and anticipates receiving his Eagle Scout badge in mid- to late-August. He hopes that one day the Eagle Scout honor will not only help him get into a prestigous college or university, but it may also help him reach his dream of one day working for NASA.
“Originally [I wanted] to work on rocket systems or space systems, but I think doing this project made me realize there are so many different avenues that you can do,” Wanchoo said. “So now I think maybe some combination of maybe disaster prevention or using GIS software that they have. I think that would be a really nice career path for me to go down one day.”
It took the Eagle Scout candidate 250 hours of work to complete the year-long project, and he hopes it will be “expanded to more towns in the future.” The inspiring teenager also hopes that first responders in the Page Valley will be better prepared when future fires spark up in the county.
Not only was the scope and significance of the project impressive to Pettit for someone still in high school, but he remarked of the courage it took for Devin to come to a remote community he did not know and talk with residents about fire safety.
“It took courage to come into a strange town and talk with strange people who you had never met in his entire life and come up with a project that was way beyond our scope of ever seeing,” Pettit said. “He was way back in the mountains, far as you could be, and spent a year with it — that took courage to do that.”
Visit Stanley Fire Company 24’s Facebook page.
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