Social media is often the first place people turn when looking for information about local events or emergencies.
The volunteers who run the site take their work seriously and have even worked through the night to keep the public informed, said Dawn Rasmussen, one of the 11 site administrators, or admins.
The group now has nearly 36,000 followers and primarily covers fires on both sides of the Columbia River, from Corbett and Washougal in the west to Alderdale and Arlington in the east. Rasmussen said the group is also frequently active in south-central Washington and north-central Oregon.
“We use information from radio traffic, Wildland Fire Dispatch reports, weather, wind, GPS and air traffic, as well as input from followers on the ground to set up fire stations quickly and efficiently,” Rasmussen said.
“We also make sure we check everything,” she said. “This site is really useful in the moments when a fire is reported until emergency responders are deployed to fight the fire.”
“It used to be that different fire departments would set up a special fire page for that incident, but people didn’t know what the fire was called. So this page became a sort of clearinghouse, a point of contact, so that when a fire breaks out, people know to come to our page to get the right information before the fire departments respond” and set up a page for the fire.
The site creates one thread per fire, “so that our site is clean and concise and all updates are in the same thread. That way it’s just constantly updated and there aren’t multiple posts on the same topic,” she said.
“The other part is that we can only update it when official information comes out, which can be painfully slow. We are often frustrated when a major incident happens and yet there are no updates anywhere from first responders or police or even from the crews if they use (tactical) channels. So we have to gather as much information as we can.”
Rasmussen said that working as an administrator of the site “is a lot of work and sometimes takes a lot of hours. It sounds a little cheesy, but it feels like one of the most patriotic things you can do because we can’t go out and fight the fire.”
In fact, the site was recognized by The Dalles Area Chamber of Commerce two years ago when the site’s founders, Mark Lamb and Darlisa Black, were named First Responders of the Year.
Of those all-nighters, Rasmussen said, “This is what needs to be done.” Fires usually die down at night, but not always, and sometimes evacuation levels can change in the middle of the night.
“The nice thing is that we work as a team and if one person has to leave, someone else takes over monitoring,” she said. “Most people don’t know what’s on this page.”
“Plus, we all have day jobs, so it’s a bit difficult, but we manage,” she said.
Another popular wildfire monitoring app is called Watch Duty. Rasmussen said, “We’re different from Watch Duty because we’re based locally and have local connections that can inform us. Watch Duty is helpful, but they also just rely on a lot of online reporting sources, so they’re not quite as well informed as we are.”
She added: “We are also always looking for people who are good with computers and want to volunteer to help us. We have a screening process and training, and a scanner radio is provided. We really need ears near Cascade Locks.”
Page administrators are closely monitoring the page and are not allowing speculation about the cause of the fire. “This is not the place for this comment. We are here to share current events and inform the community,” she said.
“The best thing about this group is that everyone has their area of expertise,” Rasmussen said. “I’m really quick at putting posts together, and other people are really good at pulling information from other sites and passing it on to me so I can incorporate it into the post.”
Others are good at collecting photos. And they all take turns monitoring who requests to join the group so they can keep trolls or spammers away, she said.
