A new app developed in Northern B.C. is giving British Columbians and Albertans one place to find official wildfire information.
Jeff Parr, a native of Dawson Creek, B.C., has built Wildfire Ready, a free bilingual wildfire app that compiles information from several official sources into one platform.
“The idea is to give people a single place to stay informed, ready and able to react fast when fire season hits,” Parr said.
According to Parr, the app includes information such as road closures, wildfire updates and hotspot data from NASA.
“We pretty much search all the information that people and emergency responders are looking for if a wildfire is to break out, and we compile it all into one spot.”
Parr said the app uses AI agents to monitor official sources for updates and compile the information onto the platform.
Parr said he has been working on the app for the past year, and he decided to release it to the public after not being able to find anything similar.
“We just started this so we could help other people and ourselves,” he said.
“We struggled in fire seasons over the years, I grew up in Dawson Creek, my family’s owned land in Northern B.C. for generations, and every fire season I’ve watched friends and family constantly checking in with each other, refreshing different government sites, phoning around, asking is this site down, what are you seeing, what’s actually happening, where the fires are at, what’s going on, whether anyone needed to start packing, nobody knew exactly what was going on in fire country. The information existed, but it was just scattered across too many places.”
Parr added the app is not intended to replace official sources, but rather compile information in one place.
“We compile what’s already public into one place, and we credit every source,” he said.
He added users have been helping shape the app while it remains in beta testing.
Parr said the full launch is planned for May 15.
The Wildfire Ready app can be found here.
