As part of a push to make Google Maps more useful during emergency situations, the Mountain View, California-based company is making it easy to locate the most up-to-date information on wildfires.
After releasing a tool in late 2019 to help people track wildfires, Google has now added a new wildfire layer to its Google Maps, which users will be able to turn on and off to see the most up-to-date information on various fires. forest at once.
“Just touch a fire to see available links to local government resources such as emergency websites, phone numbers for help and information, and evacuation details,” reads Google’s blog post on the new. function. “When available, you can also view important details about the fire, such as its containment, how many acres have burned, and when all this information was last reported.”
According to Google, the new wildfire tracking feature will roll out globally this week for Google Maps on Android, with iOS and desktop updates in October.
Additionally, Google claims that the new feature will be expanded to cover additional fires and fire information in the United States, courtesy of data from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), with Australia following suit. Hopefully, a similar alliance with the Canadian Interagency Wildland Fire Center (CIFFC) will result in Canadians getting the expanded role as well, considering there are about 140 active wildfires in Canada now.
CIFFC also has an interactive ‘Out of Control’, ‘On Hold’ and ‘Under Control’ wildfire map, which you can refer to here.
Image Credit: Google
Source: Google