[pct-l] Information Sources and Comments

[rogers at isi.edu (Craig Milo Rogers)]

	Here are some comments on information sources I've been using
to monitor the progress of the So. Calif. fires.  It's a bit off-topic
for the list, but may be useful to some readers.  Unfortunately, the
burden of providing fire information in So. Calif has exhausted some
of the information providers (including me), and some of the best
information is no longer accessible (at least, to the general public).

1)	http://www.incidentcontrol.com

	This information source was (and still is) listed on San
	Bernardino NF Web site as the primary Web contact for
	current and past local fires.  This meant that they carried
	the bulk of the Web burden for the Old and Grand Prix
	fires (and the Padua fire when the Grand Prix fire was
	adminstratively split along the lines of the Angeles NF/San
        Bernardino NF boundary).

	IncidentControl's Web site now regretfully announces that it
	can no longer support the burden of so many Web hits.  It
	directs people to the USFS Region 5 Web site.  That site points
	people to the National Intragency Fire Center's Wildland Fire
	Update.  That site points people back to IncidentControl, or
	to the FS Pacific Southwest Region [Region 5] Web site's Fire
	page, which points to IncidentControl as the primary contact
	for these fires:

http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/sanbernardino/
http://www.incidentcontrol.com/
http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/
http://www.nifc.gov/fireinfo/nfn.html
http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/fire/
http://www.incidentcontrol.com/

	Eventually, someone will straighten this out, but there are
	lots of pointers to IncidentControl's Web site right now.

2)	IncidentControl first offered frequently updated fire
	maps and text summaries.  As time passed, and the fire took its
	toll on the information infrastructure as well as the forest
	and people's lives and homes, IncidentControl offered fewer
	up-to-date maps.  Their primary fire-related text pages continued
	to be updated hourly or so, but it was difficult to see which
	material, if any, changed on the page.  Sometimes, the top of
	a page would have new information added, but the obsolete
	information further down wasn't removed.

3)	As part of its withdrawal from service, IncidentControl printed
	a "clarification" regarding the arrest and/or detention of an
	individual matching the Old Fire's arson suspect's profile.
	According to IncidentControl, IncidentControl's error was in
	relying on the veracity of the statements that were heard on the
	scanner-intercepted communications, and repeating them to the
	public at large, as though they were true.

	This illustrates there are problems with publicizing intercepted
	scanner communications.  It certainly was useful (for example,
	last night, rimoftheworld.net, below, plotted the progress of
	the Old Fire around Silverwood Lake using scanner information),
	but there may be direct or indirect legal problems with propogating
	these intercepted communications.  Also, technological change
	in public service communication systems may render scanning
	useless in the not-too-near future.

	In the rush of events, IncidentControl also other information
	content problems that it had to correct.  For example, for a while
	it listed the Red Cross as the agency to contact to determine
	whether or not a structure had burned, which turned out not to
	be the case.  For the future, whoever assumes the role previously
	occupied by InformationControl will learn from their experience,
	I hope, and prepare a richer information set ahead of time.

4)	http://rimoftheworld.net

	This site has the most detailed and current information on the
	Lake Arrowhead area.  Initially, the operator of the site provided
	text directly.  Later, the site's bulletin board rooms became
	a community information exchange.  Much of the currency of the
	information on this site was based on scanner interception of
	police and/or fire communications.  The site has provided excellent
	maps covering the progress of the fire in the Lake Arrowhead area,
	especially the scanner-based mapping last night.

5)	http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/modisrr/firemaps.php?rCode=cgb

	The USDA Remote Sensing Application Center provides fire maps
	based on automatic computer analysis of MODIS satellite imagery.
	The maps seem to be produced every 4 hours.  One map covers all
	of California and Nevada.  The PDF Plot version of this map
	is about 3 MB in size, although plotting it in expanded scale may
	take hundreds of megabytes of main memory on a PC.

	These maps were the source of many of the conventional (newspaper
	and TV) news services' maps of the fire.  They suffer from an
	inadequate resolution, even when plotted with an 8X expansion, from
	the perspective of the question, "How close is this fire to the PCT?"

	They also suffer from misplaced labels.  At the present time,
	the Grand Prix fire is labeled "Padua".  The real Padua Fire
	segment of the Grand Prix fire is no longer very active, according
	to the automatic analysis, and is unlabeled.  The westmost portion
	of the Old Fire is labeled "Grand Prix".  The middle branch of the
	Old Fire is labeled "Old".

	But, they do get updated 4 times a day, which is something.

6)	http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/angeles/
	http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/angeles/conditions/

	I understand, and agree, that the most important mission of the
	Forest Service during a fire is to save lives.  However, one of
	the most important ways to save lives is to tell people, "There's
	a fire!  Stay out!"  At the moment, the "Current Conditions" page
	of the Angeles National Forest, which is a bookmarkable page,
	reads, in part:

ONGOING FIRES AND EMERGENCIES

Currently there are no ongoing fires or emergencies. When incidents occur,
this is the location where we will provide up to date information.

	Based on my training in Public Relations, I'd call this an
	unreliable source.  If I had been trained as a lawyer, I might
	call it actionable negligance, but I'm not, so I won't.  As
	a computer scientist, I call it an unmaintained website.
	If I were a business major, I might call it evidence of poorly
	focused management;  as a business process automation analyst,
	though, I might still be entitled to make that characterization.

	The main page of the Angeles NF website now notes that a fire
	is in progress;  it didn't do so for the first few days of the
	Grand Prix fire's existance.  The forest closure notice is
	announced on the right-hand side.  Larger print would be nicer.
	Whoever maintains the site needs to be more familiar with its
	contecnts, though, and adjust the Current Conditions (and maybe
	Fire and Aviation) pages at the same time as the front page.

7)	http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/cleveland/
	http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/cleveland/conditions/index.shtml

	There is no notice that this forest is closed.  The newsroom
	link is broken.  The Current Conditions link points to
	the National Interagency Fire Center, which didn't carry updates
	about this weekend's fires (certainly, about the Paradise Fire)
	for a couple of days.

	Even more than the Angeles NF's website, this is an unmaintained
	website.  I believe that in this state, it is a public safety hazard.
	I would have raised the issue of SOBO hikers entering the Cleveland
	NF sooner, had I only known that the forest had been declared closed.

	Note, please, that I do not question the Cleveland National Forest's
	closure itself.  I applaud the decision to close the forest due to
	the imminent fire hazard.  I juest wish they'd publicised their
	decision better.

	I didn't see a "Cleveland National Forest is closed"  statement on
	the San Diego newspaper and TV station websites, either.  The
	Cleveland National Forest evidently has a reluctance or inability
	to communicate with the public via modern media.

8)	http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/sanbernardino/

	The San Bernardino NF has a clear front page statement:  see
	IncidentControl for current fire conditions.  Unfortunately,
	as detailed above, IncidentControl has withdrawn from this
	role as an information provider.

	The San Bernardino NF's website's Current Conditions page doesn't
	provide a fire link.  In the context of the single web site, that's
	not a problem, since the site's front page provides the link
	quite prominently (albeit now an obsolete one).  In the context
	of the Forest Service's evident effort to provide a consistent and
	high level of web site design and utility throughout the
	organization, it is evident that the individual Forest web sites
	need more work to bring about agreement on what information belongs
	on which detail page of each site.

9)	http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/lospadres/

	The Los Padres NF web site provides a front-page link to its
	own incident information page.  The site provides the same link right
	at the top of their "Current Conditions" and "Fire and Aviation"
	pages, too.  This is really good work, in my opinion.

	The incident information page provides a direct link to a Piru Fire
	page, which in turn links to twice-daily summary updates.  There
	is also a map link, but the map isn't quite as current as the
	text.  Still, it's a good example.

	The Los Padres NF's incident information page also mentions the
	Verdale and Simi fires.  It does not, however, provide any
	indication of an online information source for those fires; this
	is not so good, although it may be out of their control if the
	agencies in charge of the these fires don't have incident sites
	for them.  The Los Padres incident information pages do provide
	the name and telephone number of the each fire's responsible
	agency.

10)	http://www.fire.ca.gov/cdf/incidents/index.html

	This is the California Dept. of Forestry's Major Incidents Web
	page.  It also lists the major fires in the area, same as the
	USDA Forest Service regional index and the National Interagency
	Fire Center's index.  There's a pointer to a summary page for
	each fire;  no maps, though.  For up-to-the-minute information,
	the viewer is advised to call a Fire Information Phone Number,
	listed on a separate page.  [This is realistic advice, as I've
	discovered, even though it's discusting to a technophile such as
	myself.]

	It also provides pointers to the websites of the USDA Forest Service,
	the National Parks Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the
	National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), along with the advice that it
	is the viewer's responsibility to determine which agency is
	managing a particular fire (in which the CDF is not involved).

	This index is a parallel of the USDA Forest Service's index of
	fires.  Like the Forest Service, the CDF index points to
	IncidentControl, which has withdrawn from service.  Generally,
	I think, the CDF offers less information to the general public than
	does the USDA FS, but the CDF offers more accurate information.
	I don't remember which was more current (which added new fires
	first.)

11)	http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/fire_imagery.php

	Satellite imagery of fire areas.  The National Weather Services
	provides lower-resolution images, with mugh greater frequency.
	It would be nice to have the best of both worlds, of course.

	NASA also provided some excellent imagery to the general public.
	It appears to be more in the nature of a one-shot public service
	(read, public relations) real, rather than an ongoing service.

	Also, the value of the visible satellite imagery depends on the
	smokiness of the fire, the direction of the wind, the degree and
	kind of cloud cover, etc.  The images obtained last weekend were
	much clearer and easier to interpret than the images available
	today.


12)	http://www.latimes.com/
	http://www.dailynews.com/
	http://www.sbsun.com/
	http://www.vvdailypress.com/
	http://www.signonsandiego.com/
	http://www.nctimes.com/
	http://www.pe.com/

	Local newspapers.  Some feature colorful photos of the fire;
	precise and accurate maps were harder to come by.

13)	http://www.bigbeargrizzley.net/

	A newspaper in Big Bear, CA.  Last Sunday thay ran a front-page
	story saying that the Old Fire was of no immediate danger to the
	Big Bear community.  That front-page article was still in place
	(maybe it's a weekly?) when Big Bear was evacuated.  Ah, the
	irony of it all.  Now, their server no longer responds.

14)	http://www.nbcsandiego.com/index.html
	http://www.kfmb.com/

	San Diego TV station web sites.  Surprisingly good sources.

15)	http://www.fireimaging.com/imaging/2003/california/index.html

	This is neat.  They fly planes right over the fires, with
	high-resolution imaging arrays.  Too bad they had only one flight
	a day (at least, on their public Web site), the resolution was
	superb compared to run-of-the mill satellite images.  The base
	maps on top of which they layer their images could be better
	scanned, however.

16)	http://www.ci.hesperia.ca.us/

	The City of Hesperia's website.  They've been doing a really
	good job of providing current, pertinent information as the
	sourther portion of the ciry was evacuated and defended against
	the fire.  There was one glitch:  their server overloaded and was
	unavailable for a while.

17)	http://www.esri.com/jicfire/

	"This site is the official source for information about fires in the
	San Bernardino National Forest."

	That's what it says.  Honest. Will the real official source for
	information about fires in the San Bernardino National Forest
	please stand up?  Is it IncidentControl (which the Forest Service
	referenced, but which later declined the task).  Is it the Forest
	Service's San Bernardino Web site?  The USDA FS Region 5 Web site?
	The NIFC Web site?

	This site offers pertinent summary information, and a really great
	index of related Web sites, much more comprehensive than what I've
	assembled in this message.  There are some nice, easy-to-view
	fire perimeter maps, but they're not current.


CONCLUSIONS
===========

	If you want to hike in a National Forest, you'd better call
the Forest Service on the phone, first.  Relying on Forest Service Web
sites (local or national) for complete and accurate information could
get you killed, to put not too fine a point on it.  Oh, and you might
not be able to get current information by phone at night or, in some
cases, on weekends.

	There's a lot of stale information out there.  Although the
Web may seem to provide accurate information, many Web pages don't say
when they were last updated; worse still, the page may have a recent
update date, but with only some of the information on the page being
current.

	Coordination is wonderful.  It's especially fun, when we have
so many sites coordinating in different directions.

	The community-based, scanner-based plotting of the advance of
the fire near Lake Silverwood last night worked remarkably well.  I
don't know if anyone in Summit Valley or Oak Hills actually read the
relevant Web pages, and evacuated more promptly or in better order as
a result, but it sure seemed like the hourly map updates should have
had a more practical benefit than just therapy or entertainment.

	My primary goal was to keep abreast of the status of the PCT,
and raise a warning flag in the PCT-L and TrailForums.com forums when
danger seemed near.  I got sucked into the whole techno-geekiness of
the Web (it's my job, after all), and the gladiator-like combat of man
against nature, as expressed by one-sentence media reporters and
320x640 color images with lots of orange in them.  From a practical
perspective, if I'd called the Forest Service on the phone twice a
day, I might have gotten the word out sooner.

	I realize that I've been rather generous with my anti-praise
of certain organizations and their Web sites.  Maybe there's a better
forum in which I should have raised these issues, or a better way to
have phrased them.  I honestly feel that unmaintained Web sites are
hazardous, and I'd rather see the Forest Service have no Web site at
all, than one that gives dangerously incorrect and outdated assurances.

					Craig "Computer" Rogers