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CNN LIVE AT DAYBREAK
Internet Offers Valuable Fire Tracking Sites
Aired June 27, 2002 - 05:35 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Let's talk fire now. The main highway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas is shut down due to that big brush fire. The fire burned right at the edge of Interstate 15 in Southern California's Cajon Pass. The 1,500 acre brush fire started when a car caught fire and the flames spread to roadside grass. An unknown number of residents have also been evacuated. Some structures have been damaged or even destroyed.
So, we have the Cajon Pass fire in California, the Rodeo fire in Arizona and several major wildfires in Colorado. If you're having a hard time keeping track of all the fire activity, CNN's Miles O'Brien is here to help.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You've heard the old expression "you can't see the forest for the trees," well sometimes you can't see the full extent of the fires until you take a look on the Internet.
And the place to go, the best place to start is the Web site that is run by the National Interagency Fire Center, nifc.gov. Start there if you want to find out the kind of information that a firefighter has.
This is real time data in many cases, the latest information on the situation on these fires, the weather conditions, what firefighters are up against, the kind of gear they use, the tactics they use. It goes on and on and on.
As a matter of fact, here's one of the sites it linked to, which gives you the latest incidence of fire, probably more than you would expect. There are currently in this country 18 active, large fires across the country. You can see where they dominate. We've been talking a lot about fires in this area, in particular here in Arizona of late.
Another thing that's of great interest is a thing called Geomap. Let's say you want to find out what conditions are right where you live and you want to learn about a potential fire nearby. You can literally dial in the location, get a sense of where the active fires are. You see these little green triangles here which give you a sense of where those active fires are.
But let's just say you want to find out more about the Chediski fire, which is in Arizona, that we've been telling you so much about. You pop down this thing and it'll take you right in there. It takes a couple of seconds to load up. Broadband would be helpful on this one.
But what it does is take you right down onto the ground and give you some real detailed information on where this fire is and then in addition to it all kinds of information on where it might be headed and the risks that you might encounter. A good place to go. And this particular site is run by the United States Geological Survey, geomac.usgs.gov.
Finally, here's a good one to check out. This is a drought monitor. Remember that map showing where the active fires were? It's almost the identical map, if you think about it. It shows in darker areas where the most severe drought areas are. You can see them right there. That matches up pretty nicely with the fire activity that we saw before. This can be found at www.drought.unl.edu.
A quick bit of numbers for you. Right now there are 1.3 million acres that burned in 2000. That is the record year. Right now, 2.6 million acres so far this year have come under attack by wildfire. If it goes at this pace, it will more than double the record set in 2000 -- back to you.
COSTELLO: All right, thanks a lot.
Miles O'Brien on tracking the wildfires.
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