When a wildfire starts in the parched California countryside, distressed local residents are often left clamoring for details. Which direction is the fire moving? How fast? When should I evacuate? But critical information doesn't move as quickly as flames do, and the government agencies fighting the fires are frequently too overwhelmed with other tasks to send a flurry of tweets. Increasingly, rural Californians have come to rely on a band of volunteers collectively known as Fire Twitter. These online operatives monitor scanners, data feeds, and maps of the active fires in the state, then tweet out critical details to their followers. This community of Twitter superusers has helped many people decide if, or when, to evacuate and which direction to head when they do. In a feature on Backchannel, Boone Ashworth tells the story of one of the most active and helpful voices on Fire Twitter, Michael Silvester, the young man behind the handle @CAfirescanner. A native-born New Zealander, Silvester watches, listens, and tweets about California's blazes from the other side of the world—and he's never even stepped foot in the US. Michael Calore | Senior Editor, WIRED |
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