First, I want to start off with this one statement:
"THE WLF HOTLIST WILL ALWAYS REMAIN FREE TO MEMBERS OF THE FIRE SERVICE. ALWAYS HAS. ALWAYS WILL. THAT WILL NEVER, EVER CHANGE."
Many of you have seen the changes we have made to the Hotlist on WildlandFire.com and voiced your concerns. Please understand that the decisions are being made by myself, and directed to my Team. FireWhat is led by me, a fireman. I was a Fire Captain with 23 years under my belt for CalFire and I left with cancer. It drove me to push harder for better information flow and to create tools to better the lives and safety of those I called family for most of my teen years, and every bit of my adult career.
The WildlandFire.com website was built in 1997, Hotlist added in 2003, and we purchased it in 2013. We have continually made system improvements to keep the site delivering better and better content. Our map has now surpassed the National Wildfire Map in number of views by 3 million!
The site is still live. For 20 years, people could access it without a login. Just like Facebook, email, Twitter, and Google apps we are also going to require a login to access the content. Up until now, the site was driven by ads. Ads just aren't providing the revenue needed to maintain the site. The site requires much beefier servers then ever before. And much more secure channels. When we began to allow posting of photos, it may not seem like much, but the small servers the site was originally built on were maxed out in a few days. The servers they are now on cost as much a month as they did for an entire a year.
Here is why we created Incident Dashboard.
The biggest reason we are building Incident Dashboard is to provide more real-time intel to the boots on the ground. We will get beat up. We will get bashed left and right. We will be called names. We knew it wouldn't be easy!
Part of our development is to bring social content into the Dashboard experience. Why is this important? For several reasons. We see the opportunity to provide you with a heads-up look long before you arrive at the fire. When do you ever have a picture of the column? Now, if a bystander takes a photo and posts it to Twitter, we can share that with you in a one stop location. Without clicking out of the site, you can learn the fire has jumped a road from a bystander on Facebook. Or that a school is immediately threatened.
The agencies do the very best job they can to provide current intel to the troops in the field. As we have seen during several large disasters in recent past, social media is becoming a tool to provide the content agencies never had access too. This added information provides responders with much better situational awareness.
Charging? Yes, we are charging non-firefighters that sign up to Incident Dashboard. Without most folks realizing it, the site has always charged - in the mobile advertising arena. Mobile advertising isn't sustaining the operations of the site though. FireWhat itself does not rely on the website to sustain its daily operations. Instead, we respond to wildfires, deliver mapping technology, print IAP's, provide satellite services and most recently, deliver tables and chairs. We aren't looking to be greedy and profit from the site. The money earned is going directly back into paying for our full-time development team, the servers we host our content on, the domain hosting charges, and increasing insurance policies we carry on the site.
I get that change is tough. It is even tougher than creating something new. The changes occurring right now are for the better. We are bringing a location map to the forefront, right away, so that instantly you know place. Place is the very first thing you hear in your dispatch, then it is followed by equipment and hazards. All of this is part of where we are headed.
With place, we can now better understand:
- Where is the closest hydrant?
- Are there schools in the area?
- Are there homes in the area?
- Are there powerlines we need to notify tankers and copters about?
- Are there gas pipelines in the area?
- What agency is responsible for the fire?
- What DPA is the fire within?
- Is it within neighboring areas? Thus requiring multiple agency reps?
- Is there critical infrastructure in the area?
The list goes on. Our goal is to provide the tools you need to access critical information. The forum doesn't do that now and it would take a major revamp to make it happen.
So, it isn't all bad. The team working on this are some of the best I have ever worked with and are fully behind supporting you as the community. Today walking in the office, the tech team is hanging their heads low, like the first time you lost a house. They are working their tails off to create the best tools they can to support you, the community.
I wanted to respond much sooner than I was able to. Our core team has been away at the start of the week in meetings about pushing the envelope in real-time communication to and from the field. That meeting will lead to many more advances in safety for the fire community.
Thanks for the comments, some are harsher than warranted but I come from the fire service and have a little salt on my skin so I understand! I wasn't an admin guy. Might have worn glasses, but every season, I was on the front line and fought hard to get out of the pavement queens to be there. Now, this is my chance to improve tools for you! The firefighters we serve!
Sam
FireWhat and WildlandFire.comHome of the Wildland Firefighter
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