Photo Courtesy of the NRDC
By Siona Ahuja ’24
Staff Writer
The apocalyptic orange and hazy skies of the United States’ west coast serve as a reminder to the American public of the annual wildfire season, often peaking in September and October. To alert wanderers and provide relief to those affected, Google announced a plan to launch a new Google Maps filter that would show users the location of active wildfires surrounding them. Vanessa Schneider, who works with Google’s crisis response team, told the Mountain West News Bureau that Google Maps would show all major fires throughout the globe. For the United States, the feature will be able to track smaller wildfires due to the data provided by the National Interagency Fire Center, a Boise-based organization and public fire database.
In August 2020, a wildfire boundary map in Google Search and Maps SOS alerts was launched in the United States. Indicators like dynamic red blots and pins illustrate major fires, and their location is updated hourly by the website. Upon clicking the blazes, users are redirected to more resources, such as local emergency contacts, the acreage that has been burnt, percentage of fire containment, evacuations and road closures.
“In moments like a growing wildfire, knowing exactly where a blaze is underway and how to avoid it is critical,”Yossi Matias, vice president engineering and crisis response lead at Google, said in a Google blog post.
This technological advancement comes at a critical time as wildfire conditions continue to worsen. According to the Insurance Information Institute, with 58,950 wildfires burning over 10 million acres, the fires of 2020 were the second most ferocious in the U.S. after the blazes of 1960. For 2021, AccuWeather forecasters predict “another bad fire season” with upwards of 9.5 million acres being torched. This prediction came after observing a lack of significant precipitation in the months preceding May 2021. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 75 percent of the Western United States underwent drought conditions in May 2021, 21 percent of which is experiencing the most severe form of drought. AccuWeather’s Senior Meteorologist Dave Samuhel also commented that this season’s wildfires would be not only active but also particularly enduring due to the dry conditions of the American West.
This new wildfire layer adds on to a feature that Google debuted in California in 2019, which showed wildfire boundaries in real-time. However, the previous feature did not help users to see multiple fires burning simultaneously. The 2021 feature is a vital update since the wildfire season, especially on the West Coast, involved multiple fires breaking out at once.
The data is refreshed hourly, using the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s satellites. As physical data is collected, it is analyzed by Google’s geospatial analysis platform, Earth Engine.
A report on the new layer from the technology news site The Verge pointed out one flaw in the Google Map feature: it requires the user to be connected to the internet to receive updates on the fires. This is a hindrance since, at times, wildfires threaten power lines and cell towers.
Wildfires also move rapidly — often at speeds that Google’s technology may not be able to keep up with. Jessica Gardetto of NIFC’s Bureau of Land Management said that although this feature is a good tool, it is not without fault. “Because wildfires move very quickly, the Google layer may not reflect the most current fire perimeter locations and thus, the public should always monitor and work with local law enforcement and fire managers for potential evacuations and other public safety issues,” Gardetto wrote in a statement. The wildfire identification layer will roll out for Android users this coming week. iOS and desktop users must wait for it to become available in late October.