[LINK] Victoria Bushfires

[Jan Whitaker]

At 09:03 AM 9/02/2009, Stilgherrian wrote:
>I'll repeat a plea from the CFA yesterday for people to NOT visit
>their site unless there is a specific need, but to use the news media
>for information. They were being overloaded by the merely curious.
>Google have replicated it all to maps etc which reduce load on the
>CFA's infrastructure.

The specific need I felt was to check if fires were in my 
neighbourhood because my drapes were closed and I couldn't watch all 
four directions at once. Fires that were happening within 10km of my 
house were worth considering since the winds were blowing from the 
north at that time and embers were reported to be travelling great 
distances as a result.

The non-map CFA site was quick and never off line, unlike DSE which 
seemed to stall every time I tried to load the map. It only covers 
public lands, not private, and refers the people who access it to the 
CFA site. Since the fires were in country areas, the CFA is going to 
be the point of call.

New media wasn't covering these local areas at all. In fact even the 
CFA didn't report the house fires in Narre Warren, so I didn't know 
about the 6 houses that burned down less than 10k away. I did 
eventually smell the smoke, though, when the winds began to shift to 
the west, then southwest.

Again, CFA's information was 99%. Good job CFA!!!

Jan



Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
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