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Online Fire Tracking?
goatbar asks: "Being in San Diego, it is really frustrating to see the lack of information to the public about where the fires are. It seems such a simple thing to have an application where people can add info as to when and where there are fires. We would love to know when it's safe to go home, but with 3 TV stations out, it's hard to know. Seems like basic disaster service, right?"
Where is the Governator when you need him? Super soakers were put on this dear Earth for a reason. I want some XT500000 SuperSoaker squirt gun action!
Firefighters, stand back.
tilTrue.info contechtext.info prettypowerful.info twitter.com/frets fb.com/prosody
This doesn't do much good in San Diego, but for readers further north in Los Angeles County, this site has a lot of helpful info on the Grand Prix fire . It seems to be updated pretty frequently, too.
I'm in san Diego, and all of my TV stations are working just fine. AM radio is doing just fine as well. All of the local news stations have a ton of info on their websites. Check the city's site for info. Call the number they set up just for that purpose (619-570-1070). There is no shortage of info.
Incidently, check my journal for my thoughts on the fire.
Yoda of Borg am I! Assimilated shall you be! Futile resistance is, hmm?
... but for those of you down there in southern California, how are the fires affecting you?
You guys all right?
"Derp de derp."
Criminy. I know you think you're being funny ... but as someone who survived in the middle of the Colorado falls last year, I can tell you it's not working.
... best of luck to you. You've got it worse than we had it and I know it was pretty scary going outside at sunset and seeing a glow on the -wrong- horizon.
To the folks in Southern Cali
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
s/Colorado\ falls/Colorado\ fires/
Apparently my brain has some cross-linked files.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
This is a real easy implementation that doesn't require PHP or dot-NET, and is completely open source, cross platform, and imune to the slashdot effect:
When it's HOT over there, DO NOT GO!
Meanwhile you can play tetris on your cell phone.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
OK, how about a Greek tragedy then?
---
PD: I got this joke, it goes "Waiter, there's a fly in my soup!"
Jahf: Criminy, I know you think you're funny, but I ate some soup this morning, and I can tell you it's not working.
The Chorus: Oh!, Woe to the human race, the gods have not been kind to men. Their lives are so short! And so miserable! Look. One of them makes a joke. But, another has recognised a fragmentary semblance of his life in the jest, and declares it in bad taste. How sad, how pathetic, the gods have even withdrawn the grace of humor from the lives of men.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Beavis: Yes, yes, fire, fire, fire!
Flamebait? That's not an appropriate moderation. You meant to select "offtopic" or perhaps "overrated". Please correct that error.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
There are a few web pages with live satellite imagery of the fire area. This one shows the entire state of California, including both current fires and old burns. You can see the activity around San Diego quite clearly.
3 00 _0700.jpg
http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/archive/cgb2003
From the site: "MODIS Active Fire Mapping Program
Welcome to the USDA Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Center's (RSAC) MODIS Active Fire Mapping web site. Here you will find information on current large fires, active fire maps, and fire imagery as seen by the MODIS instrument on board NASA's EOS satellites, Terra & Aqua."
Also, the San Diego Union Tribune has a lot of good information at http://www.signonsandiego.com/ I think checking the web site of the local newspaper is probably the best way to keep up to date. They has links to lists of evacuated areas that are cleared for people to return.
James
California should fall into the ocean, not burn!
SCO (noun.)- A Slimy Corporate Ogre. Often seeks free money.
Oh, and what type of radio system is used here?
Eg, conventional (eg through repeaters) or, say,
some trunked radio network(s)?
In any cause, are there any online scanners
that haven't got "fire-dotted" ( =
TIA
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/Ar chive/Oct2003/California_fc.TMOA2003299_lrg.jpg
My friend (he lives in Poway -- about 5 miles from where the fire was last night) went out with a buddy and took some pictures in his area Sunday night. The one with the purple flames is my favorite. (BTW, that web site -- a hobby of his -- is in no way safe for work; as long as you don't go up to the parent directory you should be fine.)
I live about 10-12 miles from the Cedar fire, in Rancho Penasquitos. There's ash everywhere, and the sun was orange today (I heard from a friend downtown who couldn't even see the sun). Traffic has been really light, and it's been generally spooky outside. I stayed up all last night waiting for the helicopters announcing the evacuation. They never came, but I wouldn't have been able to sleep anyway.
As far as preparations? My wife and I both have overnight bags packed and waiting to go. There's another backpack that has all our contact info (insurance, banks, etc.) in it, as well as our passports, birth certificates, etc. We've been meaning to get a safe deposit box for years now, but haven't. In the garage by the door I have a "portable" earthquake kit (basically a bunch of crap in crates) with 15 gallons of water, a couple cases of MREs, first aid kit, a water purification pump, blankets, gloves, chemical flashlights, batteries for the GPS and radio, and so on waiting to go. I've got a bag of food and a leash for the dog, face masks, a bag of pistols, and some ammo. In with the ammo is one of the hard drives from my home file server's RAID1 array. All that fits in my 4Runner. I think.
In getting all that ready to go yesterday, I realized that we'd have to leave a whole lot of stuff behind, but we'd at least be safe and reasonably well stocked. It's somewhat comforting. Even still, it's surreally depressing to be preparing to be a refugee in the U.S. in the 21st century. I don't think I'll forget this feeling for a while.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
And when I do so, I notice that although the flames are about 10 miles away, they look to be an inch high. Guess that makes them about 100 feet tall or so.
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
I have to appreciate Australian fire management: toss your cig into the brush and if it burns it was ready to. Like it or not fire is a part of the ecology there in California, too, and the longer you let it go between burns, the worse it will be. Oily bark, twigs and seeds accumulate and would normally burn away at intervals preventing build up to dangerous levels.
Fire code is too important to neglect, even for style. If your house has grass up to the wall and nice juniper bushes against the wall and wood shingles, it's going up in flames if even a small brush fire passes through the neighborhood. It's a shame that "developers" are not held accountable for the houses they build.
Tankers woulnd't have done any good with the wind and amount of flammable material. Nice distraction from the economy though.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Turn on your portable radio. You'll get all the news, repeated ad infinitum, all day, every day.
Radio is always a good option for emergencies - small, portable, lasts long on batteries, and even if the 'net and most tv stations go down, radio will still be working.
-Adam
What is this "basic disaster service" of which the article speaks? TV should stay up during a disaster? As for the community-maintained website of how things are, I don't remember that working so well in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but there was a lot of bogus "information" on victim lists that were hastily compiled by anyone. There's an opportunity for designing reliable self-maintaining community software here (arguably, Slashdot is an example) but just throwing something out there is probably not good.
Up in Los Angeles, I have similar interests in what is going on. Here are some links...
Broad overview by the National forest Service
Excellent PDF of California, updated more than daily
Satellite imagery (Forest Service, very amazing)
More satellite imagery (NOAA, false colored with fires highlighted)
National Interagency Fire Centers wildfire reports
Interactive (zoomable) airspace restrictions map
And this is just the tip of the iceberg/what I happened to bookmark.
Anm
and I didn't get in the way of emergency vehicles, but here's my contribution - one picture and video.
I should have brought my tripod - everything's pretty shaky. But it does give you a good flavour for it.
The Chatsworth/Simi Valley Fire as it nears Topanga Canyon Blvd.
D
This was a pet peeve of mine two years ago during Colorado's wildfire season. One of the fires was within about a mile of my house. No useful information whatsoever about it was broadcast by the media or the public officials.
;)
First tip: Get an analog radio scanner. You won't need one of the fancy new digital models, most of the fire response stuff happens on older frequencies that are set aside for interagency response. I spent about $200 on a Radio Shack model two years ago. Look for a frequency chart, or scanner enthusiast mailing list or newsgroup for your areas. Radio geeking can become a whole new field for you!
You want to find out what frequencies are in active use for what. Here's a chart for Aspen, Colorado:
Chart
Usually the FERN (Fire Emergency Radio Network) channels have some informative traffic. Sometimes a local Radio Shack (yes, occasionally they have a clue!) might have a local freq chart. A lot of coordination traffic and information is passed along by HAMs on the Amateur Radio Relay League, so lots of useful info can be found there about evacuation and other logistics.
Also, check out the GeoMac web site:
http://geomac2.cr.usgs.gov/
Click on the middle button (wildfire mapping) and let the Java viewer load. It's not always the most current, but it is used for interagency coordination, so it's usually pretty close to up-to-date.
I would love it if public agencies would do something like what I (and other users of my software) do:
Deckers
High Meadows
Bullock Fire Map Series
-- There is no truth. There is only Perception. To Percieve is to Exist.
You can get the freqs the Hams are using to work with the Red Cross and the EOCs from the ARRL Home Page
www.arrl.org
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
... until you can watch your house burn over the internet - with Linux.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Hey, if you want to email me with an address, I'd be more than happy to drive on out there (as close as I can get) and take a "roll" of digital pictures to put up on my web site. I'm off all day tomorrow so let me know.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
The worst coverage out there was KOGO. One guy called in his porn site. Thanks... the fire got 3 miles from my house and 1.5 from my storage place. Not what I want to hear. Just figured that tons of people have hand help GPS units. It's easy to use GMT if you've got the info to make maps. The most critical time was the first 24-48 hours when the stations were all scrambling to figure out how to deal. Now there is tons of info.
Anyway, we have some local info at http://sioviz.ucsd.edu/~schwehr/fire.html
I've been impressed with the modis info.
Anyways... it's nice to be back home and back to working my thesis.
Apparently no one around here has heard of the MODIS Rapid Response System or the GeoMAC Wildfire Mapping sites.
Enjoy,
The JungleBoy
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
Back at the beginning of the year here in Canberra, Australia (January 2003) we had some pretty bad fires. Houses burnt, people killed, a real catastrophe for many people.
Needless to say, just like you are finding, the media was damn hopeless. The government only fed the facts to the local media who were present at the command centre, and they themselves had major problems with their communications infrastructure and ability to source accurate and timely data.
Now, my house was in the spot zone (where falling embers from the fire front were being carried forward and dropping ahead of the front to ignite more fires) and I found it damn stressful and the media's involvement hopeless. The local TV broadcasters did nothing apart from some scrolling subtitle style messages. Radio was better, but still inadequate.
Based on this I can heartily recommend that you forget about the Internet and the main media and buy a scanning radio receiver. I bought a Uniden Bearcat 780XLT and had it tuned into the ground crew frequencies and just hopped channels and listened to what was REALLY happening.
As the bush fire brigade were the guys at the flames, they knew what was really happening and took great pains to inform their collegues and whoever else was listening.
It is interesting that many rural communities also buy their own handheld transceivers to hear what is happening, as well as being able to communicate with each other.