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Mapping the San Diego Fires with Google Maps |
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click to enlarge
When the extent of Southern California Fires started to take shape, it became obvious that information was going to be a crucial tool in fighting the fires and serving the communities affected. When the fires burned down the KPBS radio transmitter, the NPR affiliate had to get creative in broadcasting critical fire updates and evacuation notices. They were able to redirect their feed to a local commercial radio transmitter and they turned to the web. Instead of just streaming their audio feed over the internet they also turned to Google Maps to map what information they had.
Google Maps has a feature that allows you to create a map with annotated symbols that provide details and context to the features of the map. Google calls this My Maps and they can be published to the public. So KPBS started what can be best described as a map blog to show what was happening around them. They created symbols to for the different fires (wild and contained), evacuation shelters (open, full and closed), mandatory evacuation notices, re-population areas, large animal evacuation shelters, and road closures. The amazing thing is that when you click on a symbol on the map the resulting popup is in essence a blog of what’s been happening with that fire or shelter. Instead of just embedding their Google Map in my blog I included several screen captures to show what was happening during October 25th.
KPBS also started using Twitter to broadcast the fire updates via RSS feeds and some other stations have been broadcasting updates via text messaging.
 
Click here to view the KPBS Google Map on the San Diego Fire
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