Important Up to the Minute Fire Reporting Access
Though it's hard to see the scale of the actual fires (the red dots) themselves, the National Interagency Fire Center reports that 12 large, uncontained fires have burned over 335,000 acres.
The first picture was taken yesterday afternoon at 2.25 pm and the second taken at 5.40 pm. The National Weather Service predicts that the strong winds will continue through the end of Wednesday.
The San Diego Union-Tribune is reporting that several of the fires are still not contained, and that they still threaten homes in the Northern and Eastern parts of the county. And San Diego resident Nate Ritter is keeping up his updates on Twitter. Bruce Henderson is also keeping people updated on his Weblog with photos and maps.
Barboni.org, which is linking to much more detailed maps of the locations of the fires.
While micro-messaging service Twitter may be one of the best tools for citizen reporting in emergencies such as the Southern California wildfires, the service's real usefulness is its ability to get messages to users' friends and family and provide evacuation updates -- even when cell networks are overloaded, according to homeland security consultant W. David Stephenson.
As important as the being supplied, they're nowhere near as important as using Twitter to let your family know you're ok (instead of cell calls, which every time they're used in disasters end up crashing the network -- and don't get through, either): because they're packet based, they're cued up until they can route around obstacles or gaps in the network, and the 140-character limit means they take up a tiny amount of bandwidth, leaving it for those who need it most. (Source:Cate Weather Center, CA)
