After screwing around more seems like you need to get the geopdf into a folder where it can be used as a map sheet. Im sure if you did a little googling it will be out there.
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AJ, the map sheet option may work. The other import function is for map objects thats why its probably graying out. Option may be available in paid version for more customizing if you have that? I will try on desktop tomorrow. Worth calling Cal Topo, they’ll tell ya in 5 seconds and they’re awesome.
Just wondering… should you be doing this? Are you confusing people with calling this an update? Considering you are not a part of the team or the unit not sure if your map tour and interpretation of what has occurred without any direct knowledge is a good idea.
Zeke has been providing excellent, timely information for several northstate fires. I seriously doubt anyone is confused. He is using the same information CalFire is using to develop and present their updates. Take a peek at the Dixie fire page and scroll through his posts.
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I agree with your optics bogusthunder as well. I ask the same thing about the Intel Aviation Platforms that as far as I know are not assigned to the incidents. They are great tools, but the intel lives in Interra where it should for the decision makers. As an IC of a fire I had two challenges…the first a map was overlaid on my incident and sent out on here and it was the wrong fire showing our IA fire which was 3 acres at 300 acres of which I got several phone calls from the COC. The other concern is releasing the info without knowledge of PIO or IC thus causing credibility concerns of agency info. Lastly, I think communication is key in what we do, but the responsible agencies are tasked with taking the lead as they should be. Just my thoughts.
Unless we can turn back time, the genie is out of the bottle. Personally I use a mix of old school and new high tech in what I do and how I teach my FF. Having been through 2018 and the fatalities that occurred here are my take away.
- The accident that involved HFEO Varney was known about on Twitter approx 2hr after it occurred due to AFF and “Track Logs” I was Personally contacted by multiple people asking of I was alright 1st and who it was 2nd. I reached out ans knew the truth in 10min & kept it quiet for 4hr.
- Then when the tree fell on the same fire, I listened to it live. Found out who the crew was and had the unfortunate task of notification to a peer back home because 1 of my FF was on that crew the year before. We were able to get this person the help needed early.
- The tree strike Fatality on the Mendo Complex was the 3rd. I listened to that go down live as well. The Br Director I was working for had us do a safety Stand Down and all resources were told “go find cell service and notify loved ones you are okay”
If we try and hide it, it will get out anyways. Don’t believe me go watch STRINGERS. It’s human nature, “If it Bleeds it Leads”
What Zeke has done with commercially available information that is available at ones fingertips, in the palms of ones hands is seperate fact from fiction. He is a SME of the 1st order when it comes to GIS. Couple that with his history and back ground, nothing short of amazing to get high quality intelligence out like this.
Thank you @pyrogeography
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Not really suggesting hiding things… just that the product could be a misrepresentation of his position. He is not assigned to the fire and is commenting on the fire and its progression. This is without direct knowledge of the tactics or strategies of the incident. It is really just his personal interpretation rather than a “briefing”.
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Well since anyone assigned to the fire should be going to briefing….what’s the harm in him using his knowledge and expertise to give us some insight. If someone is using this site to make tactical decisions……problems.
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Zeke’s been very clear about his role and affiliation with respect to the work he’s doing, but certainly there could be civilians and media types who just see one of his posts and think, based in no small part on his knowledge and the quality of his products, that he’s part of the IMT or an ‘official’ source.
The caliber and expertise of many of the frequent posters here is phenomenal, and this site is a wealth of knowledge to the learned and ignorant alike. Hopefully we’re all getting better by using these forums, and hopefully the intel that’s provided, whether by boots on the ground at the incident, overhead at the ICP, the Internet scanner listener from the lost city of Atlantis, a local civilian who’s wondering if they should evacuate and posts a backyard pic, or anyone else is weighed for its value and credibility.
Unofficial sources are becoming increasingly valuable, though the signal to noise ratio can certainly be a challenge to navigate.
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Do you think I could use a better term than to call it a fire update? I’m open to suggestions on how best to do this. I’ve been avoiding calling things a briefing so as not to have people think it’s official. I’m mainly trying to educate the public on how fires behave and how firefighting works.
I make an effort not to go too deep into commentary or specifics without direct information from someone who is on the field. I don’t post about accidents or burned structures, or make any commentary about evacuations, except to encourage people to leave early.
I’m always open to suggestions or feedback, especially if you see me putting out what you feel is bad info or misleading commentary. There is an email link on the-lookout.org.
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Personally, I think your doing an awesome job and I have no issues understanding that your reports are not official. Please keep up the hard work, its very much appreciated by us layman’s.
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Not sure if I qualify as learned or ignorant… but here is what I do know…
Not personal… just a professional opinion.
As far as a “briefing” I would hope that no one assigned to the incident is receiving or reviewing anything other than what is put out by the team or AHJ.
What is more of an issue is the term “briefing”. I believe that the general perception of a briefing would be that it comes from an official source who is directly connected to the incident in an official capacity.
Everything else is just an opinion(in my opinion).
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Good input. I’ll avoid using the word ‘Briefing’. It’s kind of brave new world with hundreds of webcams and new programs like FIRIS pushing perimeters out to public servers in near realtime these days. There is a huge unmet appetite for timely intel.
I have been trying to focus my work in landscapes I know well. I dug deep into the Dixie Fire because I am a local and have been working in fire here since I was a youngster, felt I had info that would be helpful for people who were coming in from out of the area to fight the fire. The local print newspapers in Dixie Fire went out of business during Covid, so there is a need to get good info out to my friends, family, and neighbors up there.
Not really interested in trying to be an expert for fires everywhere, and for the work we are currently doing on fires in the Southern Sierra we are relying on local volunteers who know what they are talking about.
I interpret everything I post, and look for confirmation from multiple sources if something is questionable in the IR - during the Caldor Fire the overnight IR was inaccurately showing fire into neighborhoods in Christmas Valley and I chose not to post portions I couldn’t confirm from other reliable sources. Another IR flight on Dixie showed 100 acres of a firing operation on the wrong side of Highway 36. I’m a qualified SITL, and apply a similar level of critique to incoming intel as I would on an incident assignment.
I agree with you it’s a fine line on how to work with people doing this kind of work. There are a lot of scanner junkies trying to be the next big thing on Twitter, and there is definitely the possibility of them ruining it for everyone.
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There are so many good — if unofficial — sources of information out there now, and there’s no way that the team can disseminate that volume of information. You can ask for spot weather, and you can (cell coverage dependent, of course) quickly see what a RAWS is reporting. One is gonna be quicker than the other, and ideally both will help paint a fuller picture. You can ask how the fire looks on Acme Ridge, or pull up the Acme Ridge cam yourself. The CHP CAD can tell you a TON. Local FB groups can provide near-real time reports on conditions.
Relying too much on any one source can be dangerous, and writing off any non-official source can prevent the gathering of valuable intel. The source should always be considered, to be sure, but we have so many tools sitting at our fingertips that — when safe and reasonable to access them — it would be a shame not to utilize them.
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A spot weather forecast is meant for a future action, and requires several ground level observations. It is a planning tool… a RAWS is a current observation at a given location.
I would recommend against any unofficial sources for information.
Ask the UPS guy who told the building engineer at the Galleria Mall fire that the fire department wanted the sprinkler system shut down…
Open sourcing information comes with many hazards. Some of it will be biased, some of it will be from sources who have a for profit mind set, and some of it will be opinion or heresy.
Relying too much on one source… Well if it is the IMT or LE or AHJ… that would be and should be the definitive source. That is the official record.
That information is coming from sworn professionals who represent the public and are duty bound to give the facts of the situation.
There are professionals who have gone through extensive training on how and when to release information- and they are called PIO’s. They have the whole picture and understand the nuances and ramifications of their comments. They make those comments without bias or connection to any private entity.
I think recent events have proven the perils of following “unofficial” information.
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I definitely agree that official sources are a good thing, and that there’s more than ever a need to justify actions that are taken based on credible information. Credibility of a given source is crucial, certainly. An IMT with no local knowledge may not have a handle on local intel sources and it takes time — even careers — to figure these kinds of things out, quality and credibility issues notwithstanding. I completely respect your insight, and appreciate the conversation.
I don’t want to stray any further from the GIS and Incident Mapping topic, and may start a new “Official vs unofficial intel” type thread for further discussion
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This has been an argument since the beginning of time. The outcome of this argument is always the same. Nothing against the PIO ever, they are doing an amazing job, but they are heavily constrained by age of intel, agency regulations/policies, and most of the time simply not where The People are, so the message doesn’t get to The People.
The PIO position and office has evolved immensely over the last 10+ years thanks to some who push the agency forward, or belong to agencies who are progressive or see the benefit of it. People like LAFD’s Brian Humphrey, who was one of the FIRST to engage The People on yahoogroup email forums, facebook, twitter, instagram, reddit, etc. But just as the fires in the last 3-5 years have now become monsters, the amount of timely intel available has exploded, as well as The People are scattered amongst a million disparate social media and physical locations. Right when PIO’s seemed to have caught up with the problem, agencies loosening up a bit, every R5 forest active on facebook, calfire units on twitter and facebook with timely posts shortly after dispatches and stuff, the incident outruns them and just as their current statement of a fire being 1200 acres comes out, there’s an air attack estimate of 3500 acres, and a FIRIS mapping of 5000+ acres.
Just locally here in NorCal, a late chief of mine had a passion for the public engagement and education and I appreciated and encouraged his work. He could switch from IC during a major incident to a PIO with empathy and phrases that both educated and put the public at ease, then go right back to his incident, tweeting updates and photos along the way. I’m similarly engaged in my dept, dropping unofficial official summaries of working incidents in places where I know The People are, such as the deep pits of Facebook community groups etc, as insane as the signal noise ratio is in those places it’s where the bulk are today.
I’ve also been contacted by some DIVS, STL’s, single resources, COMT and COML’s while they are on incident, sometimes on the line, looking for more timely intel than they were getting on the incident. Fires have been so large and can’t scale overhead fast enough that the folks on line aren’t getting what they need at times. What’s the wind look like it’ll do here at this lat/lon for the next 2hours? What’s the lightning map say? Are there satellite hits 3 miles east of me? My ops map doesn’t go that far and if there is, I need to fallback and reengage. WTF is the tone for the tac on my div because the 205 I have is wrong. Does it look like we’ll get rotor support here or did another IA fire suck them all up? None of those people are making major tactical decisions based solely on my feedback but it probably had a lot of weight behind it thanks to established trust and relationships. That’s what all this is, established trusts, relationships, experience, credibility and history. Whether it’s agency to The People, agency to agency, incident to outside, outside to incident, etc. Each of us have a weight interpreted by every other reader. There are names here I’ve seen for 20 years in the online world of fire. When they speak, I listen. What I say might have 2oz weight to some who don’t know me, and a 100lb sack of wet cement to others who do.
If we’re all worried about someone misinterpreting someone or what they represent, then there would be no innovation in this industry. We’d all be back to ground zero, where the PIO is deathly afraid of lawsuit or retribution because they inserted half an ounce of opinion and it just happened to be wrong in hindsight (coughTamarackcough). Maybe we should make IMET the PIO, so we won’t get mad when the forecast for rain just maybe, perhaps, comes up dry. After all, we always forgive the weatherman.
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@Bogusthunder could you please elaborate on what “official” intel is?
What are the recent perils of “unofficial” information.
It is my opinion the AHJs are way behind the 8 ball because they do not staff nor process intel fast enough.
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Id much rather listen to what Zeke has to say than some briefing that has a bunch of old broad brushed data . This is my 40th fire season and his mapping is state of the art in my book .
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Is this the Wildland firefighting meme forum?
Oh sorry.
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