Wildfires are still burning in the mountains about 3 miles from our house - already burned 7,000 acres and over 100 buildings, and it is 0% contained after 36 hours.
What has surprised me is how easy it's been to get unfiltered information. There are often several thousand people listening to the live stream of the sheriff and fire scanner; several people are live tweeting any useful info from the scanners; there are at least two Google Maps mashups marking the evacuation areas, closed roads and fire locations. The Twitter hashtag #boulderfire emerged within an hour after the fire was first spotted.
And, as an info pro, I was heartened to see how easy it was to find credible, reliable resources. Between search engine relevance ranking and selectively following well-connected local bloggers, I had my own news dashboard set up within minutes.
I've never felt the need to turn on the radio or TV; I had more current info online, and the traditional media were hours late in offering news via social media. In fact, yesterday the fire crews were asking people to tweet about it, as the reverse 911 system wasn't working.(!)
Wow, I didn't realize that your home was so close to the Boulder fire! Yikes!
Posted by: Ellen Naylor | September 21, 2010 at 11:12 PM