For those wondering if there were good mapping tools for finding out about the California fires currently blazing, the California Fire Alliance and the US Geological Survey has come through for you:
Fire Planning and Mapping Tools
The main purpose of the Fire Planning and Mapping Tools Viewer is a user friendly web site in which a person can create a map of an area, print, and download data to the User's personal computer to use with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software.
Diane Duane, who sent me the link suggests Google Earth folks take a look. This certainly looks like something that could be usefully combined with existing satellite and aerial images.
You run the viewer and then click on Topanga and zoom in. Maybe somebody more techie-savvy than I can find a way to correlate / interrelate this with Google Earth.
ALSO, Flickr user justinm has some frightening photos of what's going on in the Topanga area.
(See also rusworks' photos and edhiker's photos.)
Another possible way of integrating fire info would be the Google Maps hack communitywalk.com. John Brownlow has a Community Walk screenshot up on Flickr, of a spot in Toronto. He writes:
This is a terrifically clever little site which allows you to link Google maps to Flickr (or indeed any photo host that allows you to address images from external sites). The scripts currently crash Safari (although the latest version seems to have less problems). The developer tells me that much tighter integration with Flickr is just around the corner. I love this. Check out the StreetPhoto page.
WARNING: Community Walk crashes Safari.
