The Los Angeles Police Department’s undercover unit loaned the camera and sent two detectives to City Hall to help install the equipment, Fraga said.
The successful test run prompted city officials to put in orders for four new cameras that will be placed along the park, he said.
The cameras will be positioned to monitor the Dunsmore catch basin and canyon, Cooks Canyon, another basin near Markridge Road and a fourth site that has yet to be determined, Public Works Director Steve Zurn said.
A satellite command post has also been established at Dunsmore Park, where workers can download video footage of the basins on laptops.
“It’s amazing,” Zurn said. “We could just dial in right there. We can see it from up there, and we communicated back and forth with the [operations center].”
The cameras will be a critical part of monitoring the Deukmejian hillsides during what weather forecasters have said should be a wet winter, city officials said.
More than 90% of park’s rugged landscape was burned during the Station fire, exposing the area to potential debris flows and mudflows.
Residents and city and county officials have been installing large concrete dividers called K-rails, mud-deflector walls and distributing sandbags.
The U.S. Geological Survey installed water gauges that will measure rainfall, check moisture in the dirt and soil pressure in the park, said George Chapjian, the city’s Parks, Recreation and Community Services director.
The city’s park naturalists were hoping the recent rainstorm would wash away the top layer of burned material so that new plants and vegetation would start growing, but that didn’t happen.
“Things were wet, the ash was wet, but the soil underneath the ash was fairly dry, so we are just kind of waiting and seeing what kind of happens,” Chapjian said.
