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Now that the smoke from the November fires that burned huge swaths of Californiahas begun to clear, talk has turned to how to prevent future disasters. ASilicon Valley startup has an idea. Team Lali, part of the Hacking House’s first class of would be entrepreneurs, had a solution—a low cost wireless sensor network—looking for a problem. Thanks to an opportune talk by a few firefighters, they found one—fast, cheap, and, they hope, effective wildfire detection. I met with Sucre Cando, from Guayaquil, Ecuador, and Nassim Bettach, from Lyon, France, in Fremont, Calif., in November. The air was full of smoke from the raging Camp Fire some 320 kilometers north.