Port Hills Fire in New Zealand

Here in New Zealand we have had a few especially strong wildfire events. One, the Port Hills fire burned in the wildland urban interface and led to damaged structures and evacuations. This is common in the US and Australia but much less so here in the more temperate and moisture rich islands. 

As such, fire and emergency management agencies are only just beginning to realize the importance of public information maps in these situations. Fortunately, Canterbury Maps, the GIS Team at Environment Canterbury were able to step in on their first day of activation and stand up a Public Information Map for the community. They did this using WebGIS via ArcGIS Online. This map is cloud-hosted and able to handle the heavy load of viewers in emergency situations. 

Radio New Zealand was the first to pick this map up and share authoritative information in an article and they deserve recognition as well. Well done to all involved - especially the first responders doing their best to protect lives and property. 

#RimFire in Yosemite continues to burn - highlighted on our US Wildfire Map

The Rim Fire continues to impact nearby communities, Yosemite National Park, and the San Francisco Power Utilities Commission. You can use this map to track updates on the fire and also see some of our maps that are available through the Esri Disaster Response Program website. For continuous updates from firefighters themselves, go to the CA-STF-Rim Fire forum thread on Wildlanfire.com. 

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#MountainFire map and WildlandFire.com

For those of you interested in following the Mountain Fire in Southern California, I have embedded a live interactive ArcGIS Online map here in this blog.

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The map shows the latest confirmed wildfire perimeter and MODIS hotspots indicating new wildfire activity (with a ~1km horizontal accuracy). For information about this map and the data feeds go to the information page. 

This version of the map is curated by the FireWhat Team and the incident can be followed via the WildlandFire.com forum thread. Also it looks like the USFS will be actively updating InciWeb with incident details. We look forward to seeing the collaboration between FireWhat and MapSAR teams in the future.