The Twitter Wildfire Watcher Who Tracks California’s Blazes

rural landscapes. When flames threaten, residents of fire country have to make the colossal decision of whether—and when—to abandon their homes. State and local agencies can seem excruciatingly slow to provide updates. If the woods can seem lonely on a good day, on a fire day the silence breeds pure fear.

During California’s long fire season—roughly May through October—Michael sits at his desk all day, sometimes for 18-hour stretches, keeping watch over that single state’s blazes. On his desk sit four phones: one personal device and three devoted to running PulsePoint, an app that monitors the radio channels first responders use. When emergency workers respond to a distress call, the app sends him a notification.

. Michael moved closer to the scanner, rapt. Soon, it escalated to a three-alarm fire. Operators called for more units, his father’s among them. Michael sat and listened as the flames consumed everything inside the building and belched great black plumes of smoke into the sky. By the morning, the furniture store was gone.

More and more, the calls that drew him in came from California. Other disasters were one-offs, but California wildfires had a regularity to them, and their intensity was unmatched. On September 12, 2015, he happened to be listening when a fire in California’s Lake County ballooned into a 50,000-acre blaze. The Valley Fire, as it came to be called, destroyed several small towns and killed four people.

Because California and New Zealand are 19 hours apart during most of fire season—meaning Michael’s clock is set to five hours earlier, but on the next day—he can cover California fires during their peak spread times. Fires usually pick up in the afternoon, when winds are the strongest, and into the night, when most locals are asleep. When a fire burns somewhere in the state, he’ll tweet dozens of times per day. He gained followers slowly at first, just a trickle of people, then en masse.

Michael uses the app Pulse Point running on multiple phones to monitor more than 100 scanner feeds from California emergency response agencies.Michael became even more invested in learning the dynamics of California’s blazes. He read detailed weather forecasts and studied topography maps to try to predict which areas of the state were especially prone to fires. He memorized the agency codes, the lingo, the criss-crossing complexity of California’s many emergency agencies.

CAFireScanner The strongest winds are expected Thursday night and into Friday, with gusts of up to 55 mph and humidity percentages into the single digits. Wind advisories have also been issued for higher terrain in the San Francisco Bay area and in parts of the Sierra Nevada and foothills.

CAFireScanner This is such a great story & well deserved coverage. I’m not from CA… was completely unprepared for fire season. Then I woke up to flames outside my window when the Easy fire started in Simi Valley in 2019. Your info got me through those days. Thank you for what you do!

CAFireScanner Again many thanks to CAFireScanner FireMappers napsgfoundation and all the other informed individuals that share what they know and always point to vetted information that can help those affected by wildfires.

CAFireScanner Agreed and have been following for a long time.

CAFireScanner Great job Mike !

CAFireScanner He rocks!

CAFireScanner When I lived in Butte County, I heavily relied on him. He's a life saver, literally.

CAFireScanner You are in New Zealand! Wow!🤯

CAFireScanner One of the only pages I get alerts from. Super helpful, no nonsense, clear info. Cannot thank you enough for what you do for the community

CAFireScanner Yes! He is one of the best sources out there. I hope he knows how much this firefighter mom appreciates all he does for us here in California.

CAFireScanner Thats my Dude! He is so wonderful!

CAFireScanner Richly deserved.

CAFireScanner You always do great work, congratulations on the article

CAFireScanner Thank you for this. Living between Sonoma and Napa counties, I've relied on him so many times. Nice to know about his background.

CAFireScanner I and many other Californians SWEAR BY CA Fire Scanner. For four years, CA Fire Scanner has been the go to source for accurate and up to date fire news. Sending much appreciation their way!

CAFireScanner I follow CalFireBot for California and for San Diego I follow SDFireBot

CAFireScanner um, why?

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