InciWeb, when it is working, is great. Theoretically, it is One Place where you can go to get information about going fires. It is easy to upload data to the site, and it can take some of the workload off agencies if they don’t have to maintain their own fire-specific web sites.
But when there are many fires burning, or there are one or two that generate a lot of interest, the web site can’t handle the load and chokes, not working at all. When the need for it is the greatest, it is most likely to fail.
After being out of service off and on for several days, it started working recently. Not all of the fires have started using it again, since they have not been able to upload their information to the site on a consistent basis for days. But not all fires use InciWeb even when it works, for example, the BTU (or Butte County) complex does not use it.
There are several ways you can sort the data. Here is an example of fires in California in descending order by size.
And a couple weeks after the post, it’s down again. I sure wish it was up since the Cody, WY area has its first wildland fire for the season…