Our Story
On Sunday, September 27, 2020, at 2:44 pm the Zogg Fire started on Zogg Mine Road near the small community of Igo, in Northern California. Many residents had no idea there was a fire until friends, family, and neighbors called to tell them there was a fast-moving fire quickly spreading through the neighborhood. Many residents had only minutes to grab their possessions and flee the fire. Other community members in the neighboring town of Ono had a little more time, but all the government notifications were not keeping pace with the quickly escalating fire. Any community member who walked outside and looked towards the fire knew immediately that they were in danger and began packing their possessions, moving animals, and prepping their homes regardless of government notifications. Wildfire Aware™ has risen from the ashes of the Zogg Fire, through a small community’s plea for quicker notifications about wildland fires.
Government notifications are routinely reflexive and not proactive. Wildfire Aware™ is positioned to fill that gap between when the fire starts and when official government evacuation notifications are sent. Wildfire Aware ™ allows everyone to get notifications within minutes of a wildland fire being dispatched within the wildlands and wildland-urban interfaces (WUI) throughout the United States. Every community member should be Wildfire Aware!
Wildfire Aware™ provides three main types of notifications:
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New Fire notifications arrive within minutes of a wildland fire being dispatched. We do not filter fire notifications and we do not have a minimum acreage criterion before notifications are sent. If firefighters respond to a dispatched fire, a Wildfire Aware™ notification is made as soon as it is available (every once in a while notifications are delayed to issues outside our control). It is important to also realize where the fire shows initially on the map may not always be accurate, but should be within the vicinity.
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Multiple Day Fire notifications are sent when the fire perimeter is updated (usually in the morning and evening) for ongoing fires that have encroached on your notification areas. We also provide updates when official government information is updated via InciWeb, when available. This will allow you to stay aware of larger ongoing fires which are sometimes hard to track.
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National Weather Service (NWS) notifications are sent when weather conditions are conducive to wildfires or post-wildfire events (ie Debris Flows, Flooding, etc.). These notifications can help you prepare for a wildfire or recover from a wildfire safely.
Wildfire Aware™ is unique because the notifications are customized to you in three distinct ways:
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Customized Notifications Distances are unique to each location and can range from 1 to 25 miles based on the user preference; we recommend a minimum of 5 miles. In our experience, fires can quickly move 5 miles when the conditions are right.
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Multiple Locations can be set up and customized for notifications. For example, maybe for a user’s home, they would like to know about all fires within 5 miles; but for their summer cabin, they want to have notifications for multiday fires within 25 miles.. We are very generous in our number of locations allowing you to have up 50 locations that you are monitoring. So, when you are traveling you can set up a notification for your vacation destination that is nestled back in the trees and delete it when you leave. We limit to 50 locations to limit abuse of the application if you need more locations please reach out and we will do our best to accommodate.
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Customized NWS (National Weather Service) Alerts can be tailored to the user’s desires. While Wildfire Aware™ has curated a specific set of NWS Alerts related to wildfires, we want the user to be able to customize it to their needs. We offer four distinct categories to subscribe to: Potential Fire Weather, Thunderstorms and Tornados, Post-Fire Flooding, and NWS Evacuations. (Note the NWS sometimes provides Evacuation notifications so we have included them to help get the message out quickly during fast-moving wildfires, they are currently not used consistently throughout the United States).
Wildfire Aware™ was created to help the public stay aware of wildfires. We hope that it can save lives in the years to come by allowing for quicker notifications of wildfires. We would like to take a moment to acknowledge those who have lost their lives to wildfires, you will forever be in our hearts and prayers. Please stay safe out there and reach out to us if you have any questions: information@wildfireware.ai. If we help you escape a fast-moving wildfire, we would love to know that we are making a difference and would appreciate hearing your story.
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Wildfire Aware™ is owned by The Analytical Moose®. The Analytical Moose® makes no warranties or guarantees, expressed or implied as to the accuracy reliability, or completeness of the data provided within the Wildfire Aware™ mobile application. Wildfire Aware™ is not intended to provide directions to users, it is intended solely to provide situational awareness for the public around wildfires. We have exciting plans for the future as we continue to grow and help communities stay ahead of fast-moving wildfires including early detection of wildfires (both terrestrial and spaceborne) and fire prediction using our patent pending Wildfire Cone of Confidence™ fire propagation model (US Patent No. 63/413,053).
Please visit https://www.wildfireaware.ai/ for more information and continuous updates. We also recommend the Watch Duty App for follow-on information if you are in California, as Wildfire Aware™ only provides notifications about fires and access to official government information channels.
Weather data is provided by Spire. National Weather Service alerts are provided directly from the National Weather Service. Initial Fires and perimeter information is provided by National Interagency Fire Center. Links to multiple-day fire information are provided by the Incident Information System (InciWeb). Thermal activity detected by the VIIRS sensors on the NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP and NOAA-20 satellites during the last 7 days is shown on the map for reference. In California, the FIRIS perimeters are displayed when available
The following National Weather Service notification are included in each notification group: Potential Fire Weather (Red Flag Warning, Extreme Fire Danger, Fire Warning, Fire Weather Watch, Special Weather States, Severe Weather Statement, High Wind Warning, High Wind Advisory, Hazard Weather Outlook, Wind Advisory), Thunderstorms and Tornados (Storm Watch, Storm Warning, Tornado Watch, Tornado Warning, Severe Thunderstorm Watch, Severe Thunderstorm Warning), Post Fire Flooding (Flash Flood Statement, Flash Flood Watch, Flash Flood Warning, Flood Advisory, Flood Statement, Flood Warning, Small Stream Flood Advisory, Urban and Small Stream Flood Advisory), and NWS Evacuations (Evacuation – Immediate, Local Area Emergency, Shelter in Place Warning).