Yesterday and today CAL FIRE, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, posted wildfire situation reports on their YouTube channel. The reports are one to two minutes long and use state of the art graphics and production values to provide information about fires currently burning as well as the predicted fire weather. The videos have the feel of an evening newscast and are very well done.
These two videos were hosted on screen by CAL FIRE’s Department Information Officer Daniel Berlant. He is shown in the picture on the right, which was borrowed from his CALFIRE_PIO Twitter page.
Today’s edition is below, and here is a link to yesterday’s report.
This is an excellent way to communicate with the public. I can imagine that when a major fire affects a densely populated area, these video briefings, if they are specific enough to provide important, needed information, will be immensely popular and will be viewed by many thousands of viewers. Many. Thousands.
We hope that CAL FIRE will issue these reports daily during the fire season.
OK. Now, what about the other wildfire agencies? If the cash-strapped state of California can do this, why can’t the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise? You could raise the awareness of wildfire issues, encourage fire prevention and fire safe residences, and even throw in a message from Smokey Bear. The federal land management agencies have a boatload of fire information personnel scattered around the country. I can’t think of very many PIO type duties that could be more valuable than this.
Awesome! Great job Cal Fire! Hope they get to cable channels across the state somehow (valuable community service!). If not we’ll be linking to the source site.
NIce clip and very well done. It would be great to see that kind of fire update in the northwest. Good job cal-fire