NOTE: This article has nothing to do with genealogy. If you are looking for genealogy-related information, I suggest you skip this article. However, if you live in an area susceptible to wildfires, or if you have relatives who live in an area susceptible to wildfires, you may find the web site discussed in this article to be very important to you. I am publishing the article here to give it as much publicity as possible.

A new web service by a California-based mapping company shows detailed information on wildfires in real time. It shows information like nearby population size, climate and drought conditions to try to give people context on wildfires around them.

Esri is a Southern California-based company that works with geographic information systems (GIS) which collects, visualizes and analyzes data in digital maps.

Chris Ferner is a wildland fire specialist for the company. She said Esri developed Wildfire Aware to display information beyond basic containment and acreage numbers.

"We're using that authoritative data such as from the Forest Service or from Cal Fire and saying, 'Well, what else is important besides just the standard facts?' We also want to know how many people live right there," she said.

Ferner said Esri developed the map to help people get more information into wildfires around them. But she said they can also use it to check on friends or family threatened by wildfires anywhere in the country.

You can rad more at: https://bit.ly/3QtzwnJ.

The Esri web site may be found at: https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wildfireware/