The current Boulder wildfires have now forced over 3000 people out of their homes, and many wonders how this will end. Community members has stepped in to provide the much appreciated information sought after by many. A Google user nicknamed “Amanda” stepped in and created a public map to provide and collect information. Everyone are allowed to share information about the fires, and currently information about affected area, temporary housing, emergency personnel staging areas, destroyed properties and several more classes of information is being shared. There is also a discussion thread related to the map. There is also a great activity on Twitter that can be followed using the hashtag #boulderfire. This is a great example of how people come together to collaborate when most needed for.
Excepts from the Google Maps discussion page:
Excerpt 1:Aaron Updated 3 hours agoSpoke to spouse of firefighter… No homes in Boulder Heights affected as of 10 AM Tuesday. The map produced by the daily camera is incorrect.Glad we’ve got a couple people that can work together on this——-Except 2:Roy Updated 52 minutes agoDoes anyone have information on the area around Left Fork Road?clayb Updated 8 minutes ago@Roy About 2am last night I heard them calling out 215 and 333 Left Fork Rd. trying to save them. I don’t know what the disposition was though. Currently, they’re calling out fire at 900 Left Hand Canyon (though I must be misunderstanding as that appears nearly in town) otherwise they called out a report that fire has crossed 83J and Left Hand Canyon. They were doing slurry drops in the area of Lee Hill around 12:30p.bobjjones Updated < 1 minute ago@clayb – The 900 Left Hand Canyon was a “flames were seen on left side”, which was soon after they said on another channel 83J said they saw “flames one the left side, on top of the ridge” (or something like that). I took the 900 LHC as being the same information relayed to other channel. Could be wrong.Ben Updated < 1 minute ago@clayb Heard that as well and assumed they meant 9000 Left Hand Canyon, as there was also discussion of the fire cresting the hill at CR 83J above Rowena. Bad news.
Twitter Excepts:
bouldercounty To volunteer during the #boulderfire, please contact Volunteer Connection at 303-444-4904 or services@volunteerconnection.net. 10 Retweets
HumaneBoulder For help w/pets 2nite call Dispatch 303-441-3333. Pets will be housed either here or transported by officer to @LongmontHumane #boulderfire 68 Retweets
BoulderChannel1 UPDATE: FOUR MILE CANYON #boulderfireReverse 911 fails: command asks Twitter let people know to evacuate; http://c1n.tv/boulder/blog/ 100+ Retweets
teknomantik boulderoem.com (county emergency site) is returning 503 Temporarily Unavailable. Wonder if anyone can help with capacity. #boulderfire
Links:
Fredrik Bergstrand's Weblog 
Very interesting, just listened to a guy (Schyler something, excuse the spelling and lack of energy to properly check out the name) about how the OpenStreetMap community made use of the satellite imagery that Google amongst others released to help create maps of Haiti after the earthquake earlier this year. 600 people mapped the whole of Haiti in two weeks, marking refugee camps and other vital parts on the map.
The relief personnel on site asked for OpenStreetMaps specifically since they were the best maps of Haiti at that time. So very, very cool.
There are efforts to do the same thing for Pakistan, but unfortunately there is very little satellite imagery (up to date at least) available for that area.
If you can or want to help, check it out here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2010_07_Pakistan_Floods