Useful Wildland Fire Apps and Resources

Two wildland firefighters walking to a small subalpine fir wildfire on a ridge

These are my most used apps and resources for info on the fireline.

Fire Info

NIFC FTP Official website for interagency wildland fire incident data and documents. You will find all maps and IAPs for wildfires sorted by region and forest (Click on incident specific data). Great to look up on our way to an incident and have everything downloaded when we arrive.

Watch Duty App This is the newest, best wildfire tracker. It’s powered by volunteers (firefighters, dispatchers, and first responders) who monitor radio scanners and other official sources 24 hours a day to upload the most up-to-date information including maps, evacuation alerts, fire perimeters and power outages.

Risk Management

FireSync Ops App Really helpful catch all for situational awareness including mapping, weather stations, forecasts, fuel models, fire intel, fully searchable IRPG, common fillabel fireline forms, etc. There’s a lot on here.

1018 App Similar to FireSync, but cleaner for its specific calculators. Created by two brothers who were on a wildfire and missing the correct adjustment tables while they were spinning weather. They got the idea to make an app that you could plug in the weather data and added other helpful calculation based features like a hose lay calculator.

USFS EMS App Our app for EMTs. It’s constantly being updated and has searchable procedures, treatment protocols, and medication info. Great resource for everyone, not just EMTs.

ERG App Emergency Response Guidebook app so we can identify any hazardous material we may come across and proceed safely

Mapping

Avenza Maps The map app most used on federal and state wildfires. Map products are created and accessed through the NIFC FTP site for widespread sharing and you can download forest or area maps dependiong on your location in the map store.

Gaia GPS My favorite mapping app for heading to new fires or finding best travel routes. Has so many different layers of trails and roads and pretty accurate fire layers that are imported from official fire maps so you can see active fire perimeters and historical fire scar areas.

OnX Another great mapping app that gives you private and public boundary info, route finding, and many layers to guide you.

Trailforks Useful app for finding running and hiking routes in unfamiliar places especially when we go out on severity assignments where there’s no cell coverage since it works offline

 

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