This is a list of resources I gathered to help me keep up to date on the fires going on in San Diego County. I built this list because we just had a small fire here in our area and it brought back for me much of the stress I felt with the 2003 Cedar Fire, and the 2007 Witch Creek fire. The biggest frustration I had in both of those fires was the lack of information. As I saw the smoke today, I immediately began looking for information. It’s amazing how much more readily the information can be found now than back in 2007.
Anyhow, there are some great resources I ran across today, and I am saving them here for my own use in the future as well as in hopes that they may help others. If you have a resource to add let me know!
My Favorite Resources:
These resources gave me the most immediate and up to date information quickly and easily.
| Resource | Notes |
|
San Diego County RCS North Fire, CAL FIRE Monte Vista Ranger Unit (MVU) Live Audio Feed. All San Diego County Emergency Services Radio Scanner Live Audio Feeds |
San Diego County RCS North Fire, CAL FIRE Monte Vista Ranger Unit (MVU) Live Audio Feed.
This is the link to the live audio feed I used to keep tabs on the Mesa fire. This is likely the feed for any wild fires in the Ramona area. The second link is for all of the live feeds available for San Diego County. |
| Cal Fire San Diego Twitter Feed. Once they have named the fire, you should be able to search twitter by putting a pound sign (#) in front of the fire name. For example, today’s “Mesa” fire could be searched using “#Mesa” | |
|
WildlandFire.Org California Hotlist WildlandFire California and Hawaii Initial Attack Twitter Feed (@WLFIA_CA_HI) |
WildlandFire.com HotList page for California and Hawaii. Look for the thread named CA-<Unit Acronym>-<Fire Name> for example Today’s California (CA) fire in the Cleveland National Forest (CNF) was named the "Mesa" fire, and the thread for the fire was: CA-CNF-Mesa |
| Dial 211 & 211 Website | 211 Information hotline. Call 211 on your phone. |
|
Lyons Peak Camera Looking North Towards Ramona |
Map of numerous HPWREN Cameras. HPWREN is UCSD’s “High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network”. They have a number of cool resources. This is a map of a number of Cameras they have in the area. Many of these cameras refresh every few minutes and can help to see where the smoke is. We just need about 1000 more cameras that look all over the county. May of the places on the map have multiple cameras. Make sure to follow the “Related Website” link in the information on each push pin to get to all of them… |
| US Forest Service MODIS Active Fire Maps | Cool interactive map of active fires as well as satellite based fire detections. (Enable the MODIS, AVHRR and GOES layers for the last 24hours). Read more about it below. |
Web Site Resources:
| Resource | Notes |
| California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection | California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection |
| San Diego County Emergency Home Page | |
| Dial 211 & 211 Website | 211 Information hotline. Call 211 on your phone. |
| Ready San Diego | Ready San Diego. They have a number of resources for disaster preparedness. |
| Alert San Diego | Alert San Diego – Sign up for email, voip, and cell phone alerts. |
|
WildlandFire.Org Initial Attack California and Hawaii Hotlist WildlandFire.Org Continuing Fires / Incidents for California and Hawaii |
WildlandFire.com Initial Attack HotList page for California and Hawaii. Look for the thread named CA-<Unit Acronym>-<Fire Name> for example Todays California (CA) fire in the Cleveland National Forest (CNF) was named the "Mesa" fire, and the thread for the fire was: CA-CNF-Mesa. If a fire has been burning for over 24 hours, its thread may be moved to the second link (Continuing Fires / Incidents) |
|
Incident Page Network – A subscription service that will send alerts to your email, cell phone, or pager. However, the list of San Diego County Live Audio Feeds from RadioReference.com (http://www.radioreference.com/apps/audio/?ctid=219) included a feed from IPN. |
|
| InciWeb | From their site: ”InciWeb is an interagency all-risk incident information management system. The system was developed with two primary missions:
A number of supporting systems automate the delivery of incident information to remote sources. This ensures that the information regarding active incidents is consistent, and the delivery is timely.” |
| National Weather Service Fire Weather | National Weather Service Fire Weather |
| Santa Ana Winds – Southern Cal fire weather | Santa Ana Winds – Southern Cal fire weather
Lots of links to a variety of resources. Keep scrolling down. There is a lot of interesting stuff here. |
| Deerhorn Valley Community Association Blog | This is a blog maintained by the “Deerhorn Valley Community Association”. The regularly post information about fires in the Deerhorn Valley, Bratton Valley, Lyons Valley, and Honey Springs areas.
You can also follow them on twitter via @deerhornvalley |
| Lakeside Fire District Blog | Blog of the Lakeside Fire Protection District from Lakeside, CA. |
| US Forest Service Active Fire Mapping Program | I haven’t been able to view this during an active fire here in the region so I don’t know how timely it is, but it looks cool |
| US Forest Service MODIS Active Fire Maps | This is a very powerful interactive fire map. You can use the list of “Layers” along the right to view MODIS, AVHRR and GOES satellite based fire detections. Expand the folder to each to select the time range you want to see fire detections in. The layers MODIS, AVHRR and GOES layers are updated hourly. Looks cool.
Click the “Metadata” link to the left to learn more about the layers you have enabled. Click the “Help” link along the left to learn more about the tool. |
|
CAL FIRE San Diego County Fire Authority – Public Affairs Bureau Blog |
CAL FIRE San Diego Public Affairs Blog. |
| CAL FIRE San Diego’s Flickr Photostream |
Social Networking Feeds and Pages:
| Resource | Notes |
| Cal Fire’s Twitter Aggregation | |
| Cal Fire San Diego Twitter Feed | |
|
Cal Fire News Twitter Feed and |
More General California Fire News Twitter Feed and Blog. This is not an official CAL FIRE news source. It is a feed provided by the maintainer of the California Fire News Blog. |
| CAL FIRE Incidents Page | CAL FIRE Incidents Page. You can search for the name of your fire if you know it. It looks like not all fires make it in this list though. |
| CAL FIRE Incidents RSS News Feed | CAL FIRE Incidents RSS News Feed (Read this with your favorite RSS Reader). This looks to be the same information as the web page above but in an RSS format. |
| Ready San Diego Twitter Feed | |
| Ready San Diego Facebook Feed | |
| San Diego County Twitter Feed | |
|
WildlandFire California and Hawaii Initial Attack Twitter Feed (@WLFIA_CA_HI) |
Twitter feed of the postings to the wildlandfire.org “IA-California and Hawaii” forum postings. |
Emergency Services Radio Frequencies and Live Audio Feeds:
| Resource | Notes |
|
San Diego County Emergency Services Radio Scanner Live Audio Feeds |
San Diego County Emergency Services Radio Scanner Live Audio Feeds from RadioReference.com GREAT RESOURCE!!!! You can listen to emergency services radio traffic live via the web! Really cool. This page also includes a feed from the Incident Page Network (IPN) for San Diego County incidents. |
| San Diego County Emergency Services Radio Frequencies. This would be handy if you have your own scanner. | |
|
San Diego County RCS North Fire, CAL FIRE Monte Vista Ranger Unit (MVU) Live Audio Feed |
San Diego County RCS North Fire, CAL FIRE Monte Vista Ranger Unit (MVU) Live Audio Feed.
This is the link to the live audio feed I used to keep tabs on the Mesa fire. This is likely the feed for any wild fires in the Ramona area. |
UCSD High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN) Resources:
|
Resource |
Notes |
|
My Bing map of HPWREN Cameras. I made this map on 08/25/2010, so it may be out of date. Use the next link for the most current information. |
|
| HPWREN Cameras Page. Go here for an up to date listing of HPWREN cameras. | |
| HPWREN Sensors Page. |
Update History:
06/27/2012 – Added the InciWeb.org website.
10/15/2010 – I added the CAL FIRE San Diego County Fire Authority – Public Affairs Bureau Blog and CAL FIRE San Diego’s Flickr Photostream per Battalion Chief Nick Schuler’s comments. I also added the California Fire News Blog link and noted that the blog and associated Cal Fire News Twitter Feed are not affiliated with CAL FIRE.
09/10/2010 – I added the links to the Deerhorn Valley Community Association Blog,
Deerhorn Valley Community Association Twitter Feed, Lakeside Fire District Blog, US Forest Service Active Fire Mapping Program, and US Forest Service MODIS Active Fire Maps.
09/02/2010 – I added the links to National Weather Service Fire Weather and Santa Ana Winds – Southern Cal fire weather web pages.
08/26/2010 – I added the links to WildlandFire.Org Continuing Fires / Incidents for California and Hawaii and WildlandFire California and Hawaii Initial Attack Twitter Feed (@WLFIA_CA_HI)
