Aerial firefighting company believes military-grade tech could stabilize ‘astronomical’ insurance rates, prevent disaster
By Jack Reaney SENIOR EDITOR
It’s no secret that the Big Sky community has enjoyed a dose of good luck when it comes to wildfire. Despite sprawling development in the wildland-urban interface, the Big Sky area has dodged catastrophic wildfire events for all five decades since skiing began attracting visitors and real estate investments. The last large-scale fire to affect Big Sky burned more than a century ago.
That’s not to suggest complacency. The community installed an AI-powered fire detection camera in 2021 and added a second camera in 2022, and that technology successfully flagged a fire in 2024. The Big Sky Fire Department continues to expand its outreach through efforts like Fire Adapted Big Sky and Alpenscapes, spreading tips for prevention, home hardening and a Big Sky Wildfire Action Guide.
Still, wildfire risk looms over the community, prompting interest from Bridger Aerospace, an aerial firefighting company with Gallatin Valley roots and federal fire suppression contracts.
Most recognizable for its “Super Scooper” planes deployed on government fire suppression contracts, Bridger Aerospace also offers aerial surveillance using military-grade thermal sensors to detect young fires before they combust and spread.
“They can detect a thermal image underneath the forest duff, the size of a basketball, from nine miles away,” CEO Sam Davis explained in an interview with EBS. “So, things that you and I wouldn’t see until it was a 300-acre fire.”
The modern technology allows human crews to quickly extinguish a fire at its root, Davis said. It’s a leap forward from traditional aerial fire surveillance done by officials scanning with their eyes from an aircraft.
Operating on a State of Montana contract in July 2024, Bridger sent a surveillance flight after a lightning storm near Missoula and identified eight lightning strikes—even flagging heat from some elk beds—and notified crews, who extinguished the kindling fires before a remarkable high-wind event. Davis believes it helped prevent disaster.
In Big Sky, Bridger Aerospace sees not only a “near and dear” neighbor, but an opportunity for the company’s first private sector fire surveillance contract.
“Big Sky, unfortunately, is a tinder box with the Lee Metcalf Wilderness and all the old growth forest,” Davis said. “… You guys are sitting in a funnel, so if something hit at the top and with the wrong wind direction, it could be bad. It could be very bad.”
Davis credits Lone Mountain Land Company as being a thoughtful developer, with “so much work” on prevention from home hardening workshops, ground crew work and funding of Pano AI cameras, to its donation of land for the new Spanish Peaks area BSFD station. Even with LMLC’s industry-leading efforts, Bridger believes it can complete the picture.
“Big Sky is the perfect place to be at the tip of the spear on this,” Davis said.
The service is admittedly costly—hence the precedent for Bridger contracting only with government agencies—but Davis explained it would only be billed for 60 to 90 days of fire season, and could “absolutely” pay for itself in a reduction of home insurance premiums.
Insurance rates ‘astronomical’
Robert Kerdasha, insurance broker with Assured Partners, does a lot of business in Big Sky. He’s passionate about a potential partnership with Bridger Aerospace that could be funded by various Big Sky entities—Kerdasha and Davis each envision a consortium of ranches and property owners, large private companies like LMLC and its affiliated clubs, and government bodies including Gallatin and Madison counties, and the Big Sky Resort Area District.
Kerdasha is still floating the idea, and none of those entities have made financial commitments.
While Kerdasha doubts the prevention effort would actually reduce insurance premiums for property owners, he’s confident it would stabilize rates and prevent large insurance providers from leaving the market, as they have in places like fire-prone California and hurricane-battered Florida.
“Because you’re looking at a community that is proactively trying to protect itself, rather than saying, ‘well, if s*** hits the fan, then so be it,’” Kerdasha told EBS in a phone call. “… [Providers] can only take so much risk in a geographic area, in a certain quadrant of territory.”
Kerdasha’s business partner, Jennifer Singletary, said proactive mitigation is appetizing for insurers especially since the Palisades Fire ravaged Los Angeles in January 2025, burning thousands of acres and costing billions of dollars—a fire that Davis believes could have been detected earlier with Bridger’s technology.
Singletary said in rural areas like Big Sky’s outskirts, homes valued near $3 million may face premiums of $40,000 to $50,000 per year. Availability and cost of coverage depend on “wildfire scores” to assess risk based on factors such as climate, response time from fire departments, proximity to fuel sources, wind patterns, historical fire activity and community fire mitigation measures.
She said Big Sky property owners’ rates are “astronomical,” deterring people from purchasing real estate and moving to the area.
“I mean, you guys are paying very close to California rates. Which is, you know, not something that five and 10 years ago you were doing,” Singletary said.
Bridger’s services would include data reporting for a 60-to-90-day period and simulations on fires successfully spotted, ideally in collaboration with the Big Sky Fire Department. After a few years, Singletary is confident insurance providers would respond positively to the data, helping to justify the cost for the Big Sky community.
“Because then I think it just sells itself,” Davis said. “Insurance companies want proof. They want data behind their coverage… The data is what really has the potential for the upside there.”
Still, the community would need to weigh the potential costs of disaster and potentially swallow an upfront cost.
“It’s gonna be a combined effort of [groups] coming together to say, ‘what is worthwhile to spend on this,’” Kerdasha suggested. “Not one entity is going to be able to absorb the cost of this.”
Davis added the community could take it a step further and pay for Bridger’s fire suppression services “to ensure you have all the bases covered,” but the foremost priority would likely be Bridger’s aerial surveillance and data analytics.
Big Sky Fire Dept., LMLC weigh in
Bridger has engaged Big Sky’s large organizations, such as Lone Mountain Land Company and its affiliated clubs, Town Center and Resort Tax, but Davis did not specify which or the extent of those conversations. He’s hopeful that the Big Sky community will pull something together for next year.
“We’re in active talks with them about how we can meet the need… It’s just been a little bit of a developing discussion, right now,” Davis said.
Fire Chief Dustin Tetrault said BSFD has not been approached by Bridger Aerospace, and he can’t speak to specifics regarding a potential partnership with Big Sky entities.
He explained that BSFD currently detects fires using Pano AI cameras, heat detection satellites through NASA’s MODIS program and the National Guard’s FireGuard program, and human observations. If the community could afford Bridger’s technology, Tetrault said it would further improve fire detection and prevention.
“I think that any technology that provides early detection is a great tool,” Tetrault wrote in a statement to EBS. “Early detection allows us to keep wildfires small and manageable.”
LMLC representatives told EBS in a statement via email that the company and its local affiliates are supportive of fire prevention efforts.
“We are continually implementing technology and measures to address fire mitigation,” the email stated. “We haven’t yet engaged in a partnership but are always looking for what’s next in mitigation efforts to stay ahead of the curve.”
