Editor's note: Amy Gahran writes about mobile tech for CNN.com. She is a San Francisco Bay Area writer and media consultant whose blog, Contentious.com, explores how people communicate in the online age.
(CNN) -- "Uh-oh, I smell smoke again, hang on ..."
Robbie Trencheny, a 20-year-old programmer based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, walked away from our Skype video call to look at the billowing clouds of smoke outside. When he returned: "Yeah, it really smells like a bonfire out here now," he said.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the Waldo Canyon wildfire has burned more than 15,000 acres in the mountains just outside Colorado Springs. It's moving fast and doubled in size overnight. Several neighborhoods in the western part of the city, and part of the Air Force Academy, have been evacuated, and homes have been destroyed.
Trencheny lives about five miles east of the blaze. An avid Twitter user, he saw the flood of discussion about the fire there, and he decided to help make it easier to follow the action.
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A firefighter works a burnout operation on the north flank of the Fontenelle Fire outside Big Piney, Wyoming, on Wednesday, July 4. More than 800 firefighters are working 15-hour shifts battling the fire that has exceeded 56,000 acres, according to fire information services.
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So in about 45 minutes of coding, Trencheny and fellow coder Scott Siebold built the Waldo Canyon Wildfire Tracker. This app collects all tweets containing #WaldoCanyonFire (the Twitter "hashtag" denoting this event) and displays them in a constantly updated stream. At the top is a photo gallery showing all the photos posted to Twitter with that hashtag.
"We wanted to help in some way," he said. "We figured we'd use our tech skills to help, since not many people in Colorado Springs have the skills to do this quickly. The pictures are the best part so far. They're really powerful."
Colorado Springs has a fairly small tech community, and most people there don't use social media much, aside from Facebook, Trencheny said. His online tool is something can can give anyone with Web access a window onto the public discourse about this emergency, whether or not they use Twitter.
Most people think of "apps" as programs that you download and install on a mobile device or computer. But this is a "Web app," delivered entirely through the Web browser.
"The first time you check it out, be prepared: This fire is moving fast!" Trencheny said. To make it less overwhelming, he suggests making sure the "retweets enabled" checkbox near the top is unchecked to eliminate duplicate tweets that occur as people interested in the fire copy updates to share with their own Twitter followers.
The information from Twitter comes from all sorts of places: from official agencies such as the Colorado Springs Fire Department to people in and near the city sharing what they're witnessing with other people around the state and the nation.
"Part of what makes this compelling is not so much reading every tweet but just getting a real-time sense of how fast this is moving," he said.
Trencheny could add Instagram photos to this app, since like Twitter, Instagram offers an open application programming interface. But he hasn't, because not many people in Colorado Springs appear to be using Instagram much. However, Instagram photos bearing the #WaldoCanyonFire hashtag and cross-posted to Twitter are appearing in the app.
Help for wildfire evacuees and first responders
"I can't add Facebook posts, of course, because that's a closed network," he said.
While this Web app can be viewed on a computer, it also works fairly well on smartphones and tablets. Trencheny says he will continue to improve the mobile interface Wednesday.
This project isn't just about Colorado Springs. People in other cities facing wildfires (or any type of emergency) can reuse Trencheny's code base, for free, to spin off their own iteration. He's posted this open source code to GitHub, a popular resource for programmers who like to share what they create.
In fact, Trencheny plans to spin off a version of the Web app to track other current wildfires in Colorado, such as the High Park Fire outside Fort Collins, which has burned more than 87,000 acres, or the Flagstaff Fire burning just outside Boulder. And he'll explore adding more features, such as a map or integrating photos posted to Flickr.
Trencheny is part of the growing movement of "civic coders": programmers who enjoy building free tools and services to help communities. Sometimes these are solo efforts, but often civic coders collaborate, either online through resources like GitHub or in person at events called "hackathons" where coders self-organize into teams and compete to build software over the course of a day or a weekend.
The nonprofit Code for America initiative is helping accelerate civic coding by fostering collaboration between coders, local or state governments, and community groups to solve problems. Some of this happens by deploying teams of coders to help government agencies, but Code for America also supports civic hackathons around the nation.
Similarly, last year the Apps for Communities Challenge (a contest run jointly by the Federal Communications Commission and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation) awarded more than $100,000 in prizes to coders who built apps to "make local public information more personalized, usable, and accessible for all Americans." (See the winners.)
Trencheny, who hails from the San Francisco Bay Area, participated in Code for Oakland, a civic hackathon for Oakland, California, now entering its second year. And the company he works with, Momentum, is building a platform to make it easier for nonprofits, government agencies and relief organizations to accept online and mobile donations.
"We're currently reaching out to fire departments and other agencies helping to fight the Colorado wildfires and provide relief services," he said. "They all are seeking donations right now."
Trencheny also applauds local officials in Colorado Springs for doing an excellent job with communicating about the Waldo Canyon Fire via social media.
"They were on it right away. The declared a hashtag and encouraged people to adopt it. And they're being responsive to questions on social media and very open with the community there. That makes the content of the Waldo Canyon Fire Tracker so much more useful," he said.
iReporters share their harrowing views of the western wildfires
The opinions expressed in this post are solely those of Amy Gahran.
© 2012 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 
Trees smolder and burn on the north flank of the Fontenelle Fire. The crews are working and sleeping close to the fire in an effort to contain it.
Firefighter Ryan Christian sits with his crew from Alaska before heading out to fight the Fontenelle Fire outside Big Piney. The blaze, burning in dead and thick stands of timber, started on June 24 and is 15% contained.
Firefighter Alex Abols monitors fire on the north flank of the Fontenelle Fire outside Big Piney. Record fire danger and long stretches of the red flag warning days have made it challenging to control.
A utilities worker walks past the skeleton of a vehicle on Monday, July 2, while searching for gas leaks in a Colorado Springs community ravaged by the Waldo Canyon Fire.
An American flag waves Monday in front of a house leveled by the Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado Springs. Residents began returnning to the area on Sunday after the fire forced thousands of people from their homes.
The words "We Will Rebuild" are seen written on the sidewalk in front of a house in Colorado Springs that was destroyed by the fire.
Fire-destroyed homes are seen in the Mountain Shadows neighborhood in Colorado Springs, where hundreds of residents were given an eight-hour window to visit their properties on Sunday, July 1.
A jogger on Sunday looks out over neighborhoods in Colorado Springs that were evacuated due to the Waldo Canyon Fire. The massive fire has destroyed hundreds of homes and forced more than 32,000 people to flee.
Frank Baker visits the remains of his brother's home in Bellvue, Colorado, on Saturday, June 30. The house was burned to the ground in the High Park Fire.
Homes destroyed by the Waldo Canyon Fire are seen from the air in a Colorado Springs neighborhood on Saturday.
Damaged cars line the curb in front of ruined houses in Colorado Springs.
The line of fire damage is clearly visible in this Colorado Springs neighborhood.
Smoke billows at sunrise from part of the Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs.
One home stands surrounded by others destroyed by the Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs on Saturday.
Homes burned to the ground by the Waldo Canyon fire are seen in a neighborhood in Colorado Springs on Saturday.
The fire, which has burned more than 15,000 acres, began spreading to the southwestern corner of the Air Force Academy in the early morning, causing base officials to evacuate residents.
President Barack Obama tours fire damage with elected officials and firefighters in the Mountain Shadows residential neighborhood in Colorado Springs on Friday.
Firefighters get ready to tackle the Waldo Canyon Fire on Friday.
A house is engulfed in flames as fire crews fight to contain it at the Rose Crest fire in Herriman, Utah, on Friday, June 29. Crews are fighting to contain six separate blazes in the state.
A pig is evacuated in a wheelbarrow from the Ching Family Animal Refuge in Herriman, Utah, as the wildfires worsen on Friday.
Melissa Bowman, a CNN iReporter from Big Piney, Wyoming, captures the Fontenelle Fire close to her home as she waits for an evacuation notice.
A camp for firefighters is set up at Holmes Middle School in Colorado Springs on Thursday, June 28. The Waldo Canyon Fire has scorched more than 16,700 acres.
A partially burned home smolders Thursday in Colorado Springs.
The line where the Waldo Canyon Fire stopped moving east is seen from the air in Colorado Springs. Lower temperatures and lighter winds helped firefighters on Thursday in the battle against the fire.
An aerial view of a destroyed neighborhood in the aftermath of the Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado Springs.
The Waldo Canyon fire spreads through a neighborhood in the hills above Colorado Springs on June 26. See more photos at The Denver Post.
Hazy smoke from the Waldo Canyon Fire looms behind the Air Force Academy stadium on Wednesday, June 27, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The fire expanded to 15,000 acres. More than 32,000 people have been evacuated.
Susan Custer and her husband, Gary Custer, watch the Waldo Canyon Fire on Wednesday.
At dawn on Tuesday, firefighters stir from their tents at a camp near Holmes Middle School.
Smoke billows from the Waldo Canyon Fire west of Colorado Springs on Tuesday.
Evacuees drive under a shroud of smoke from the Waldo Canyon Fire on Tuesday.
J'Amie Sirvaitis of Colorado Springs watches the Waldo Canyon Fire after winds pushed the fire into the Mountain Shadows neighborhood in Colorado Springs on Tuesday.
Residents of Colorado Springs watch as the Waldo Canyon Fire burns a home in the Mountain Shadows neighborhood on Tuesday.
Smoke from the Waldo Canyon Fire engulfs Interstate 25 north of Colorado Springs, Colorado, as the blaze burns out of control Tuesday.
A large plume of smoke from the Waldo Canyon Fire fills the sky west of Colorado Springs on Tuesday.
Jan Stone, right, comforts Angela Morgan as smoke from the Waldo Canyon Fire pours over the Mountain Shadows neighborhood of Colorado Springs on Tuesday.
A portion of the Waldo Canyon Fire moves across a hillside above a subdivision west of Colorado Springs on Tuesday.
Colorado State Patrol and Colorado Department of Transportation personnel set up a roadblock west of Manitou Springs, Colorado, on Monday, June 25.
A portion of the Waldo Canyon fire burns out of control in the hills west of Manitou Springs on Monday.
Trees burn on a ridge above Cedar Heights in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on June 24.
Greg and Karen Bodine help her father, Duane Schormann, left, load his animals into a trailer near Colorado Springs as they evacuate the area June 24.
The High Park Fire, which was 45% contained as of June 23, has destroyed 191 homes west of Fort Collins.
The High Park Fire rages through the forest west of Fort Collins, Colorado, on June 19.
Local resident Dwayne Crawford looks out at the High Park Fire from his home west of Fort Collins on June 19.
A heavy air tanker drops fire retardant on the blaze June 19. Its growth potential was "extreme," according to authorities.
Flames scorched this area outside of Fort Collins where the High Park Fire has burned out, June 19.
A helicopter drops water over the Wood Hollow Fire north of Fairview, Utah, on Tuesday, June 26
A wall of fire makes its way down a hillside toward a farm north of Fairview, Utah, on Tuesday, June 26. The Wood Hollow Fire, one of at least three wildfires burning in Utah, has grown to nearly 39,000 acres.
Smoldering earth and damage from the Dump Fire, which began June 21, can be seen outside a plant near Saratoga Springs, Utah, on Saturday, June 23.
Burned-out terrain from the Dump Fire fills a hillside near Saratoga Springs, Utah on Saturday.
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