The biggest fire in the recorded history of the area races toward your town. It is within miles of your house, and smoke is everywhere. You call up the official Incident Report web site to see if you can figure out what’s going on. The site takes several minutes–an eternity online, and an eternity in a crisis–to finally load. The result? A sterile update full of numbers: crew, acreage burned, cost in dollars–and a map of the fire that is four days old. As of writing this, the web site is completely down.
Fortunately, a local community blog spotted the need for more timely, comprehensive and always-available information–and has been delivering it ever since the fire started moving our way. It provides a long list of resources, such as sites with great maps including timely thermal satellite overlays that show where the fire is really located, and up-to-the-minute reports from a variety of sources as well as questions and answers from local residents. Spread largely through word of mouth and other blogs, the site now boasts something like three thousand visitors per day in this sleepy town of eight thousand. Clearly, this is blogging at its best–uniting a community in its most compelling time of need.
While the men and women on the ground and in the air battling this blaze have been nothing short of truly heroic, the powers that be attempting to keep local residents informed online could learn a few things from a small community site that knows how to deliver updates to residents craving timely information about their beloved home town. Thanks again to the Ojai Post for seeing and filling an important need.
Possibly Related Posts:
6 Comments
Hey Robert – We actually broke 4,700 visitors and 10,000+ page views yesterday, thanks in large part to bloggers such as yourself. Your contributions have made this a community effort – all along I have been saying “we” are doing this, because it’s not just me participating. Thanks for the great post – loved it. – Tyler, The Ojai Post
Thanks for stepping up and leading the charge, Tyler. You’re right — a perusal through Technorati:
http://technorati.com/tag/Day%20Fire
shows that many bloggers have responded in their own way.
But your site became a trusted source and quickly spread through word of mouth thanks to your residents-informing-residents approach in the posts and comments. When crisis hits, people want to connect with eachother, and they want accurate and timely information, and you provided a much-needed outlet for both.
Too true! Power to the people!
Hey Robert – yeah, in looking at Technorati the other day, I realize I need to get tagging going on the Post… thanks for the nice thoughts as always. -Tyler
You might be interested in this:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/1000108
By the way,until it was eclipsed three years ago by the Cedar Fire in San Diego County…
http://www.timesdaily.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061002/APN/610021912
… the biggest fire in California history was the Matilija fire in 1933, which burned 220,000 acres — in Ventura County. In other words, roughly same area burned by the Day Fire. Since the Day Fire now ranks at #5, Ventura County has been host to 2 out of the top 5 fires in California.
Again, keep up the great work.
Great article, Doc. I have been musing in my own way about the incredible difference in cycle times between traditional and print media, because I straddle both the (very slow) world of poetry and (very fast) world of online software:
http://www.robertpeake.com/archives/197-.html
Having an RSS feed gave me a sense of having an added edge in monitoring the fire with respect to servers in our datacenter we would want to physically move in case of evacuation. I wrote a simple script to poll it, check for new items, and page me if it found any:
http://www.robertpeake.com/archives/203-.html
But when the RSS feed itself started timing out, had to resort, as you said — to Technorati tag searches and other aggregators (like Topix.net). Tyler over at the post also put in some reputedly really long hours pulling together scraps of information to form a reasonable picture for readers of the Ojai Post. Amazing what a fire coming toward your home town can do in terms of motivation. But I agree there has to be a better way. The NOAA Weather Radios:
http://www.weather.gov/nwr/
look promising, but not free. The internet is remarkably ubiquitous these days, but something we can’t assume everyone will access in times of emergency. Someone needs to build a better News Hose, as you put it — and then keep it from getting clogged up!