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The Internet Science

Online Fire Tracking? 61

Posted by Cliff from the finding-the-hot-spots dept.
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?"
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Online Fire Tracking? More

Online Fire Tracking?

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  • Hah (Score:2)

    by igabe ( 594295 )
    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.
    • "Where is the Governator"

      He hasn't been sworn in yet. Gray Davis is still in charge. Sorry, I don't remember the date the changeover happens.
      • Not to mention that governors don't stop fires. They're not even close to having god-like powers.
        • But he could have gotten the fucking air tankers in the air sooner.
          • Err, nice troll I guess.

            In general, the tanker support wouldn't have mattered. It's been too windy for them to fly.
          • When was the last controlled burn and how many of the houses followed fire code?

            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

    • Has that little fascist hell-hole burned down yet?

      This is Daryl Issa territory. Home to the recall, Pete Wilson, and manifest other horrors.

      Funny how the rich white pigs in Scripps are burning it up.

      Chula Vista and National City - with Democratic and non-white majorities, got no worry over the fires. 'Cept when the money is doled out county-wide - they'll get nothing again. Al paid-out to rebuild the 5-bedroom homes of retired naval officers outside Tierrasanta.

      • You're disgusting. In the face of a disaster, there's no such thing as Republicans or Democrats, only your neighbors losing their houses.

        Your partisanship in an issue that has nothing to do with politics has made me physically ill. Hopefully some day you'll have to suffer through the same thing.

  • Fire Info (Score:2, Informative)

    by epsilon720 ( 307234 )
    This doesn't do much good in San Diego, but for readers further north in Los Angeles County, this site [incidentcontrol.com] has a lot of helpful info on the Grand Prix fire [incidentcontrol.com]. It seems to be updated pretty frequently, too.

  • I'm in San Diego (Score:4, Informative)

    by NickDngr ( 561211 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2003 @12:42AM (#7325821) Journal
    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 [sannet.gov] 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.
    • I'm in hemet and there is *no* information on the several fires in and around my town because the reporters are busy covering your big city fires :) (hemet is 70 or so miles from san diego and 30 from san bernadino/redlands). Sure, there will be information in the weekly paper, when it comes out in a few days...:) I agree with the poster that the lack of information at times is frustrating ...
      • I'm in hemet

        Well, the question was about the fires in San Diego. Hemet, as you know, is in Riverside County. In San Diego, there was a phone number that I gave in my previous post that was set up specifically to be a clearinghouse for fire information. Maybe it's time to lean on your county supervisors to set up something in your area.
      • Sure, there will be information in the weekly paper, when it comes out in a few days...:)

        I take it nobody mentioned to you that your copy of the newspaper is a pile of ash?

        Actually, so is your front porch.

        If I'm not there in 5 minutes to deliver the evacuation order, leave without me.

        (Here, in BC, the Governer general gave some medals this weekend to a group of firefighters -- including one who had his own home go up in flames while he was fighting the fires elsewhere).

  • ... but for those of you down there in southern California, how are the fires affecting you?

    You guys all right?

    • Well, everything outside (here in Claremont) is covered with ash. Everything. The bottom of my skateboard is covered with a thin layer, and my bearings are starting to sound bad. Other than that, it just smells like a campfire outside now. Saturday night, though, was terrible. Big flakes of ash were falling that seemed to always land right in your eye. It was getting pretty depressing for a while. I hope it keeps getting better; I'm sick of not being able to go outside barefoot.
      • Take somes pics and post them please.
        • Ooooooo, pictures of ash. Exciting. The only good pictures I have are from last year, when the hills were on fire, and those are definitely off topic.....
        • My pictures of the Old Fire burning north of San Bernardino. These were taken Saturday night and Sunday Morning (Day 2 of that blaze burning).

          The majority of the pictures are taken from Strawberry Peak which is in between Running Springs and Crestline.

          Linkage [rockbandit.net]

          I actually had a working photo gallery up with all the pics and descriptions, but it crapped out earlier today. Will try to get it back up and running...
        • A friend of mine living near the Simi Valley fire [greenpixel.com]... (He's gonna love getting slashdotted...)

        • San Diego (Cedar Fire) Pics (Score:2, Informative)

          by Wee ( 17189 )
          Take somes pics and post them please

          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 [lickmewhereipee.com] in his area Sunday night. The one with the purple flames [lickmewhereipee.com] 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 he

          • Thanks for posting a link to those pics. I'm in Europe and my parents live about 3/4 of a mile from that intersection where the pictures were taken, and I have been searching for pictures close to home. Very scary to see your own neighborhood. Didn't really expect to find these pictures on slashdot.

            Back on topic, I have found the US forest service webpages useful (that other posters have given), but I agree that it was generally hard to find information about where the fires actually were. I know, I'm in E
            • Thanks for posting a link to those pics. I'm in Europe and my parents live about 3/4 of a mile from that intersection where the pictures were taken, and I have been searching for pictures close to home

              Hey, if you want to email me [mailto] 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

          • I'm up in NorCal now, but I have to ask - why not leave for a few days anyway? It's always seemed to me that if you're waiting for a helicopter to tell you to get the hell out that maybe it's a bit late...particularly when most of the deaths have been people trying to get away in their cars.

            I'm not trying to preach doom and gloom, but I think if a fire of that magnitude was anywhere near my house up here I'd go crash at a friend's place out of town for a few days. I can see the desire to try to save the
            • I'm up in NorCal now, but I have to ask - why not leave for a few days anyway?

              Honestly? I can't. Unless I have to I won't leave. My wife is the senior buyer for a company that got hit by the fires, so she pretty much has to go into work. (The chancellor has closed the university where I work.) And I have another reason for staying which I can't discuss here. But we're not in any real danger unless the winds head west for a while. We'll have some warning. If they call for "volunteer evacuations" w

      • 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 [amazing.com] as it nears Topanga Canyon Blvd.

        D

  • Semi-realtime satellite image of fire status (Score:4, Informative)

    by jncook ( 4617 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2003 @01:27AM (#7326032) Homepage
    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.

    http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/archive/cgb20033 00 _0700.jpg

    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

    • The SignOnSanDiego site is passable as far as information and is a bit better than the 8/10/39 websites. There is a lot of room for improvement.

      My biggest complaint is that the site takes a long time to load - too fsck'ing many ads when dealing with emergencies. I'd like to see a much leaner site with a short update on the fire and a link to the full blown website. What I'd really like to see is a much more detailed map showing where the firelines are in close to real time - the fire maps on the website's

    • That's a great map. My only complaint is there are 3 large active fires in Humboldt County that have been burning for weeks and aren't listed.

      The good news is that none of them are threatening homes or other structures at the momemt, and no lives have been lost as a result of them.
    • What I have always wondered is this:
      What would it take to get close to realtime satellite coverage of high-risk areas? If you can detect new fires within hours/minutes/seconds, you could send a quick response team with their airplane full of water and extinguish the fire before all hell brakes loose.

      What kind of technology is being applied nowadays to detect forest fires when they are still small, or do the first reports come in long after it went out of control?
      With the kind of media attention forest fire
      • Quick response times and putting out fires while they're small is what got us into this mess.

        Fire is a normal part of most forests. Periodic small fires clear out underbrush, fallen leaves, and pine needles, reducing the amount of fuel available and making large fires less common. The small fires also rarely spread from the ground to the treetops, so large trees usually survived the fires.

        Back in the early to mid 1900s, the Forest Service built an impressive network of fire watchtowers in the western fo

  • This isn't right! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Izanagi ( 466436 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2003 @01:27AM (#7326033) Journal
    California should fall into the ocean, not burn!
    • Actually, that's still our plan out here: burn everything, then fall into the ocean to put it out. Clever, eh?

    • Heh - makes me think of this line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

      King: Listen, lad: I built this kingdom up from nuthin'. When I started here, all of this was swamp! Other kings said it was *daft* to build a castle in a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em! It sank into the swamp. SO, I built a second one! That sank into the swamp. So I built a *third* one. That burned down, fell over, *then* sank into the swamp. But the fourth one......stayed up. And that's what you're gonna get, l


  • 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" ( = /.-ed )?

    TIA
  • 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.
  • 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

  • Look Harder... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anm ( 18575 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2003 @09:12AM (#7327353)
    Up in Los Angeles, I have similar interests in what is going on. Here are some links...

    Broad overview by the National forest Service [fs.fed.us]

    Excellent PDF of California, updated more than daily [fs.fed.us]

    Satellite imagery (Forest Service, very amazing) [fs.fed.us]

    More satellite imagery (NOAA, false colored with fires highlighted) [noaa.gov]

    National Interagency Fire Centers wildfire reports [nifc.gov]

    Interactive (zoomable) airspace restrictions map [blm.gov]

    And this is just the tip of the iceberg/what I happened to bookmark.

    Anm
  • 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
  • ... until you can watch your house burn over the internet - with Linux.
  • Thanks to those who gave good info. When I posted the message to slashdot, I was talking to my sister, who is a producer at NBC. They were the best info, but two stations were down and KUSI had a camera on the roof looking at the flames across the street.

    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

  • Apparently no one around here has heard of the MODIS Rapid Response System [nasa.gov] or the GeoMAC Wildfire Mapping [usgs.gov] sites.

    Enjoy,
    The JungleBoy

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