Every few years the Garden Route in South Africa is hit by killer fires that run wild through the area.
These fires are sometimes started by lightning but most often they are started by people who carelessly discard cigerette's in the veld or who intentionally start these fires.
Fires cause millions of Dollars damage to property and sadly sometimes even lives are lost.
Ushahidi, can be used as an early warning system to track fires throughout the area and this together with rapid responce times from local and national fire services can help to save lives.
So how can it help?
What Data that can be tracked:
- 1 Gps co-ordinates of current fires
- Wind speeds, direction and other weather forcasts for the local area during a fire.
- Responce times from the time a fire is reported to time firefighters start fighting the fires.
- Date, time and location of all fires and be logged
Urgent info that would need to be collected before such an event breaks out would be:
- A list of everyone willing to help fight such fires when they break out.
- A list of people who are willing to house the homeless after a fire.
- A list of pilots willing to fly into affected area's to transport releive supplies or doc**ent fires.
- A list of key government contacts who can help with rapid reponses to these fires.
Resources and or info that could be collected and shared would be:
- Locations of nearest water sources where water tanks can be filed during a fire.
- Locations where evacuated residents can meet or get info
- Emergency contact numbers of who to call during such a crisis and who manages what.
I am sure that with proper management and early warning systems in place more lives could be saved and fires could be fought and brought under control before they burn out of control and destroy huge sections of forestry and private property. With the help of Ushahidi this will be possible.
You need to be a member of Urgent Evoke to add comments!
Join Urgent Evoke