The devastating wildfires this month in Los Angeles have affected a vast number of people, with 180,000 forced to evacuate and another 200,000 under evacuation advisories. TidBITS contributing editor Michael Cohen is in the second group because he lives in Santa Monica, literally across the street from the nearest evacuation zone border. He still has power, water, and even Internet service and has been updating us on his status over the past few days.
To keep abreast of the situation, I’ve started using an iPhone app recommended by some Apple consultant friends: Watch Duty from the nonprofit Sherwood Forestry Service. The app is essentially a container for the Watch Duty website, which provides wildfire maps and real-time alerts. It doesn’t just repackage publicly available information; instead, it relies on active and retired wildland firefighters, dispatchers, first responders, and reporters to collect, vet, and disseminate information about wildfires. Watch Duty provides its critical safety features for free, but a $24.99-per-year membership helps support the nonprofit. It also allows you to drop pins for more locations, receive alerts for more than four counties, and track the flight paths of active firefighting aircraft.
The app is focused around its map, which shows fires, zones under an evacuation order or warning, wildfire cameras, and more. Additional layers let you see power outages (only in California), display surface wind direction to get a sense of how the fire might be moving, and air quality index numbers to evaluate the smoke situation. Beyond the usual zooming and panning to find map locations, you can swipe up on the search field to see all the fires in the visible location or search for an incident, an address, or a place. To stay current on what’s happening, you can sign up for notifications about fire starts, evacuations, and significant updates by county, though they may be overwhelming for those only trying to assess what family and friends may be experiencing.
Watch Duty has become an essential tool for me since we live in a fire-prone region in the southwest. I use the web version on the desktop and on my iPhone.
That is the application that I now use here in So Cal. I have it on my iPhone and on my Macbook Pro. I’ve tried many others and found Watch Duty to be beter than all that I’ve tried.
I’ve been using the app since it was initially released and there have been constant improvements. It was instrumental last week when my entire family used it to determine that my daughter’s family needed to self-evacuate the night before their home in Altadena was destroyed by the Eaton fire very early the next morning.
Please also note the IOS app Local Haze will give you crowd -ourced locally focussed air quality measurements in real time. I’ve mentioned this app before (remember those Canada fire smoke drifts over New England?). Air Quality around surrounding areas of fire and industrial devastation varies greatly with weather conditions and geography. ‎Local Haze on the App Store
Personally I found it somewhat useless for my needs as it only shows fire areas and not current satellite images of damage. What is displayed is how the area looked before the fire. For me that information is already readily available all over the Internet. What it will not show me is if an acquaintance’s home is still standing or rubble.
Los Angeles County has a website with damage maps for both fires. You can search the maps by address or by clicking on icons for each address inspected. If you tap the icon, a picture of the state of the building at that address appears.
By the way, I found this website by reading the updates on the Palisades fire posted on Watch Duty.
Thank you. Unfortunately, it shows nothing but grey building outlines. It does not show the damage to Pali High, that I attended in '64, even though it was destroyed, nor Paul Revere damage, even though a roof or more burned, nor anything on Mandeville Canyon, where friends live, even though 30 homes were supposedly damaged or destroyed. I simply can’t understand why there are not current satellite images easily available to the public to see what actual damage has occurred.
Give it time. The site gets updated daily with the status of each structure colored in once the Phase 1 inspection has been completed and documented in that neighborhood. My daughters house in Altadena just turned red (100% destroyed) today, ten days after it was known to be burning.
The maps are from on-the-ground assessments, so it may take some time to cover the whole area. Satellite views are going to be difficult in places like Mandeville Canyon because it’s a narrow canyon. The map does show a cluster of homes at the end of the canyon that sustained no damage. Everything that I have seen shows that the fire was stopped just short of the canyon because the wind died enough for aircraft to be effectively utilized to fight the fire.
The map of Palisades High School (now Palisades Charter High) shows numerous buildings. Those at the north end of campus were destroyed, while those further south appeared to survive. Pictures are associated with each marked location, so you may be able to figure out exactly which buildings made it and which didn’t.
By the way, I am generally familiar with the area as it looked 50 years ago, having grown up in the San Fernando Valley and living in the dorms at UCLA (1967-1971). Will Rodgers State Park was a special place for me.
WARNING: This reply contains some realistic graphic references by design to impress on the readers the utter tragedy of this fire and its long term effects. These people need help beyond your imagination so please donate.
WW State Park was special for me to. It was walking distance from where I lived as a child around 10 years before you. My neighbors across Amalfi Dr. where I lived used to walk down the stairs at the end of of it where it split off into 2 roads going down the hill with their surfboards at dawn before going to school at Pali High. I was in the class of '64 when it first opened and worked in the summer’s as a volunteer research technician at UCLA Medical Center.
From what I have read, WW State Park it is totally destroyed. What a tragedy and loss but not as bad as those who lost friends and relatives.
I recently saw a story that a Palisades resident returned to his home to find it a total loss, and when he went to check on his neighbor, may have been a relative, possibly his sister, whose home was also gone, as the story said, he found her remains. This to me meant, given the intensity of the fire, that he found bits of her charred skeleton of that person who he had very recently had dinner with. I suspect he will likely suffer from PTSD for the rest of his life. I just can’t imagine what he felt when he discovered that.
Yes. I’ll just add to beware of scams, consider supporting organizations that have a regional focus, and take the proportion of donations used to provide aid versus paying for salaries and fundraising into account.
I often check this tax-exempt status database before giving:
What I always do before contributing to a non-profit (why contribute to a profit making company?) is to type the following into a browser search engine:
“Organization Name” Form 990
Form 990 is a IRS required tax document that all tax deductable non-profits are required to publiclly make available. It is the equivelent to the standard tax form that taxpayers are required to submit each year but designed for non-profits. It is a very long form and much of it is useless for the contributer to know. What is useful and a requirement to list is senior management compensation, marketing costs, payments to major consultants/contractors, income, and expenses. If compensation is in the middle 6 figures or higher and/or marketing costs is a significant percentage of the income, they they do not get a dime from me as I want my donations to go to the cause and not to managements luxury lifestiles and excessive market costs to support that. I constantly consider the question: Why should my donations of my hard earnd money to a cause be ultilized to support a executives luxury lifestyle instead of the actual cause that the organization is stated to represent? If management really believes in the case, I am of the opinion that their compensation should be that of a mid level income for average needs with anything above that being used to support the cause they are promoting.
A few facts about TV non-profit ads:
TV ads on local stations costs around $8K -$25K per minute not including production costs or actors salaries.
Most of the non-profit testimonals on TV are paid for their testimonals and some are actors.
Some of the TV ads showing abuse or hardship are filmed outside the US or are poised to create sympathy.
