SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA—One unsung hero in the weeklong battle against the massive wildfires that devastated southern California last week was an unmanned Predator B airplane, originally designed to gather intelligence for the military. By providing firefighters with up-to-the-minute data on the many conflagrations, it helped in the coordination of firefighting efforts that spared many lives and structures—including the venerable Palomar Observatory.
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Jon Cohen (2007) studied this question.