Firefighter Blog

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Labels: bird flu, Google Maps, Swine Flu

Mashable points us to a Google Maps workup of the Victoria Fires.




Click here for the code.

Labels: Australian Bushfires, Bushfires, Google Maps

Keith at Xasauan Today is offering great local coverage of the Basin Complex Fire. Keith has intimate knowledge of the back country of Big Sur and is using Google Earth with Forest Service KML overlays to highlight firefighter movements and fire activity.
This is ground breaking local reporting. What Keith is doing could be a template for blogging local disasters in the future.

You have to try Google Earth to comprehend how powerful the software is. I have spent a few hours "in" the Ventana Wilderness and Los Padres National Forest via Google Earth over the past few days. Once you master the controls you find the program allows you to maneuver through canyons to ridge tops, then turn around, stop and look, study the elevation then pan out for a birds eye view. My review doesn't do the program justice.

I've come to another conclusion.

If national incident command teams are not already using this or similar programs they should be. I see a day everyone in the field will sport a GPS enabled handheld like an iPod. If all resources, including hand crews, engines, division supervisors, dozers, strike team leaders and spotters carried such devices commanders could follow their movements real (or near real) time for safety or tactical reasons.
I'm getting carried away but I have seen the future, it's a safer and more efficient tech driven future.

Labels: 2008 Fire Season, Basin Complex, California Firestorm 2008, Google Earth, Google Maps

From Satmapper via comment section;

"If you have Google Earth installed, you can pick-up the MODIS data yourself in KML format (Google Earth) for CONUS at: http://maps.geog.umd.edu/firms/kml/ After downloading, open the file to start Google Earth. This has the additional benefit of giving the recording time of each spot you poke on".

Thank you Satmapper. You guys do incredible work!

If you don't have Google Earth download it here.

Labels: fire maps, Google Maps

In what may be the first large scale response by a tech company to a natural disaster, Google has jumped to the aid of the Chinese government and people in the wake of the massive Sichuan Quake.

China based Shanghaiist Blog offers this summary of the Google quake response;

"With over 30,000 dead, another tens of thousands missing, and 200,000 injured, coupled with a broken down mobile/land line and transportation system, many people are on a frantic search for each other, and Google mobilised 100 of its employees to help create a custom search engine entirely dedicated to helping people find their friends and loved ones. Other nifty tools found on this feature-rich page include Google Maps integrated with the latest earthquake and relief......"

Well done Google.

Labels: China Quake, Google Maps

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Reuters via Yahoo! news:

"Fire brigades were battling 87 forest fires around the country on Saturday, in "western Greece, the Peloponnese, the island of Evia and the Attica (Athens) region," fire department spokesman Ioannis Stamoulis said.

Soaring temperatures, hot winds, drought and arson have been blamed for the unusual number of forest fires this summer.

Worst hit was the Peloponnese, where dozens of villages have been evacuated while others remain cut off by the flames. Fires in the region stretched some 160 km (100 miles) from the Ionian Sea in the west to Mani in the peninsula's most southern part.

"My village is burning," a resident from Travlos in the Ilia region told Greek television. "There are about 500 people here. We have gathered water in buckets and are waiting for the flames to approach. There is nothing else we can do....."

".......I can hear the flames outside my door. There is no water anywhere, there is no help. We are alone," a resident from the village of Adritsaina told a Greek TV station by mobile phone.

Greece declared a state of emergency in the provinces of Lakonia, Messinia and Ilia - where electricity and phones were largely cut off - and called for urgent help from its European Union partners.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said he was "saddened by the tragic loss of human lives" and he hoped EU partners would "provide all the material support Greece needs in this moment of distress."

Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyanni said France was sending 4 Canadair planes, due on Saturday, and also 60 firefighters.

Germany had offered three helicopters and Norway one plane under a joint European firefighting program."

Labels: 2007 fire season, Google Maps