As wildfire season heats up across Montana, it can feel hard know where to find reliable, up-to-date information. Here's a rundown of the kind of sources, tools and verification we use when covering wildfires — and you can use them too.
Montana Public Radio news director Corin Cates-Carney sat down with host Austin Amestoy to talk about how and why MTPR covers wildfires.
Austin Amestoy: Corin, obviously MTPR doesn’t cover every single fire that starts in our listening area. But we do report on some of them. How do you make that call, as our editor?
Corin Cates-Carney: Fire is a natural part of the landscape, but it can become a threat to human lives, health and property. So, most of our coverage is going to focus on letting our audience know where and how a fire is burning that can impact those things.
There are more ways we cover the wildfire and firefighting efforts, but that public safety info is at the top of the list.
And pivoting to how we report on wildfires; During fire season we’ve got at least one reporter looking into this information every day of the week. You were on “fire watch” for MTPR this last weekend. Tell our listeners what that looked like for you.
Austin Amestoy: That’s right, Corin. It had been a pretty quiet weekend until Sunday afternoon when the Miller Peak Fire flared up on the Lolo National Forest southeast of Missoula.
Corin Cates-Carney: How did you first find out?
Austin Amestoy: Our first resource for most new fire starts is an app called Watch Duty.
Watch Duty is available for free on all major app stores. You don’t have to make an account to start using it, and you can sign up to get fire notifications from up to four counties for free.
Watch Duty first pinged my phone about the Miller Peak fire at 5:17 on Sunday afternoon, a little bit less than 40 minutes after the blaze was first reported to dispatchers.
Corin Cates-Carney: And, just a note for our listeners here, MTPR doesn’t sponsor Watch Duty, or vice versa. We’re talking about it because it’s become a critical part of our reporting and it’s valuable for non-journalists, too, for tracking wildfire information. As we use it, we’re also verifying the information posted on the app with an official source, like a local sheriff’s office or regional national forest.
Austin Amestoy: Yeah, absolutely. I actually called up Nick Russell to learn more about Watch Duty’s work. He’s vice president of operations there. Russell told me the app was built to solve a really difficult issue: crucial information about new fires, like evacuation notices, is often delivered at the county level, not by states. Here’s Russell:
"It’s not just 50 problems, it’s thousands of problems, and it can’t be fixed at a county-by-county level."
Austin Amestoy: Russel told me most counties just don’t have the resources to build a centralized place for fire information, and that’s where Watch Duty came into the picture.
After a fire is first reported, a team of volunteers trained to monitor wildfires report updates on evacuation notices, the fire’s size, shelter locations and more, and it’s all displayed on a map that’s pretty easy to navigate.
Corin Cates-Carney: Alright, so you got a notification about the Miller Peak Fire, then what did you do?
Austin Amestoy: I went straight to Facebook. That platform has become the go-to place for many government agencies to post critical wildfire information, sometimes even before it’s on their websites.
The first place I checked was the Lolo National Forest’s page. If the fire’s burning on national forest land, they’ll often confirm it on Facebook. The Lolo Forest said firefighters were responding and gave an estimate of the fire’s size.
Next stop was the Missoula County Sheriff’s Facebook page to scan for any evacuation notices. The fire was new and seemed to be burning in a fairly remote area, and there weren’t any notices listed quite yet. But, I opted to write something up for the website and our airwaves anyway. It was generating a significant smoke plume visible from a few big communities, and I knew people would be asking questions.
Corin Cates-Carney: Listeners may hear us cover new smoke plumes too, to let people know what’s going and whether it’s a threat or not. And now that the Miller Peak Fire is a significant one that will probably burn for weeks to come, can you talk about how our coverage of that fire will shift now?
Austin Amestoy: Yeah, great question. Now that the Miller Peak fire is established, we’ll continue to post updates to its size, the resources responding to the fire and other non-breaking news to mtpr.org. We may broadcast some of that information as well, if there are significant updates. We’ll monitor those government Facebook pages for new evacuation warnings or orders, and if those come down, we’ll call to confirm them and then broadcast those alerts regularly on our airwaves.
That pattern will continue for all major fires in our listening area until the season winds down.
Corin Cates-Carney: Most of the tools we use to learn about wildfires are available to anyone, but verification of information is important so you know it’s coming from a trusted source.
Austin Amestoy: That’s right, Corin. MTPR collects and verifies the fire news we air for our listeners, but they have access to literally all the tools we use, too.
Watch Duty, and the state’s mtfireinfo.org consolidate lots of wildfire info into one place.
Check your county sheriff’s Facebook page to confirm evacuation notices.
And, once a fire becomes a major incident, there’s a great website called InciWeb that gathers all relevant information about a fire in one central place: maps, announcements, reports from fire managers, photos and videos and more.
Follow MTPR’s wildfire news updates online or on your radio.
Corin Cates-Carney: Austin, thanks for the breakdown.
Austin Amestoy: You bet.
-
Land management agencies across the state are starting on prescribed burning projects across western Montana. Prescribed fires reduce hazardous fuels and can be beneficial to forest ecosystems. -
As summer heats up in Montana, so does wildfire season. This raises the question, does winter snowpack really correlate to the severity of the wildfire season? And what does a 'normal' fire season mean? -
At Neptune Aviation, an aerial firefighting company based in Missoula, maintenance crews work throughout the winter to keep their fleet ready to deploy across the country. -
With the core wildfire season in the rear view mirror, fire officials are taking stock of the summer’s activity. It was marked by intense heat, fast initial attacks on new starts, and a tragic reminder of the dangers associated with fighting fire.
