Online Dispatch, Scanner and Related Data Sources
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Fire Department - See the later section on firescan.net for details on using this website to track radio dispatches. The radio glossary may be useful too. Firescan links given here go to the pages showing dispatches for a given fire agency.
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Santa Cruz County Fire - http://www.firescan.net/cgi-bin/chindex.php?ch[]=0 - Dispatcher is called "Felton". Engines from Burrell Station, Soquel Station, and the Loma Prieta Volunteers (among others) are dispatched on this radio frequency.
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Santa Clara County Fire - http://www.firescan.net/cgi-bin/chindex.php?ch[]=3 - Dispatcher is called "County Fire". Engines from Redwood Estates (and lots of Santa Clara County) are dispatched on this radio frequency.
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Santa Clara County Ranger Unit - http://www.firescan.net/cgi-bin/chindex.php?ch[]=2 - Dispatcher is called "Morgan Hill". Cal Fire engines in the rural parts of Santa Clara county are dispatched on this radio frequency.
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Santa Cruz County Emergency Dispatch - http://www.firescan.net/cgi-bin/chindex.php?ch[]=1 - Dispatcher is called "Netcom", "Red Fire" or just "Red". Fire and ambulances in all of the various cities in Santa Cruz county are dispatched on this frequency.
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Loma Prieta VFD blog - http://lomaprietafire.blogspot.com/ - Automated posts about some incidents (coming from firedispatch.com) and manual posts about other things from the VFD when time and conditions allow. Not all posts are in real time, but good information regardless.
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Santa Cruz county radio scanner served online - http://tunein.com/radio/Santa-Cruz-County-Fire-and-CAL-FIRE-s145538/
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Santa Cruz county radio scanner served online - http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/344 - Monitors Santa Cruz County Fire dispatch (Felton), Santa Cruz County 911 Center dispatch (Netcom/Red), and sheriff, at least.
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Law Enforcement
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Santa Cruz County Sheriff - No source found online for this yet.
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Santa Clara County Sheriff - http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/ctid/225
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CHP - http://cad.chp.ca.gov/Traffic.aspx - See next section for details.
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Traffic
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https://maps.google.com/ - turn on the traffic layer. Updates aren't really fast, but reasonable.
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http://www.waze.com/ - now owned by Google. Locals report things (obstacles, police, etc.) and you can get a sense of traffic issues. Some people love it.
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http://quickmap.dot.ca.gov/ - Caltrans map of incidents from CHP and others, along with traffic flow.
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http://cad.chp.ca.gov/Traffic.aspx - CHP's dispatch center showing incidents they are working. Select "Monterey" in the upper left "Communications Centers" pull down to see incidents in Santa Cruz County. Select "Golden gate" in the upper left pulldown for incidents in Santa Clara County.
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http://www.dot.ca.gov/cgi-bin/roads.cgi - CalTrans site to query specific highways. Enter 17 and get specific problems on that road.
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http://www.sccroadclosure.org/ - Santa Cruz County Public Works Department road closure list
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PG&E
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Outage map - http://www.pge.com/myhome/outages/outage/
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Email Information Sources
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http://www.firedispatch.com/ - sign up to recieve email about incidents in any area they cover. This includes most things dispatched by Netcom in Santa Cruz, and many things dispatched by Cal Fire. You control what sorts of emails you get. Note that not all calls that result in a dispatch also result in an email. These systems are complicated, and the interconnections aren't always obvious.
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http://95033talk.com/ - the 95033talk email list - general neighborhood discussion. Several people post fire information, and quite a few post about major traffic problems, particularly on 17. Membership open to residents in our general area, loosely the 95033 zip code. Note that those who only get message digests or who only get messages by logging into the group's web based UI won't get things in real time. To get real time information, you need to get each email as they are sent to the group.
There are several twitter users you can follow for local emergency data. Some users are more locally focused, while others cover broader areas. You can configure twitter to send text message to your cellular phone, to get real time updates if desired. In a major emergency that could be useful, as it bypasses email.
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Covering Our Local Area:
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@jrpstonecarver - information about major events in our area only (nothing off topic). Things you might leave work for, or call home about.
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@calfireczu - information from Santa Cruz county fire. Brand new as of this writing, but seems to be focused on the county.
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@lomaprietafire - information directly from the Loma Prieta volunteers. Not updated often - generally the volunteers are working the incident, not tweeting about it - but look for it to provide information in the winter when storms are knocking trees over and roads are being closed. And there may be other times when it is used.
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@firedispatchsc - twitter - the dispatch center covering the cities and other parts of Santa Cruz county not covered by the Cal Fire dispatch in Felton.
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@NativeSantaCruz - a Santa Cruz resident who monitors a scanner and tweets about events that can impact us, along with other things.
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@jcopeland_sc - Santa Cruz Sentinel reporter who tweets story links, some of which include information about incidents in our area.
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@fullfirstalarm - San Jose resident and photographer who tweets about emergencies. Not sure if he covers Santa Cruz county, but he definitely tweets about things in the Lexington Hills area.
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Covering Cal Fire statewide:
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@CALFIRE_CHIEF - Cal Fire's state fire chief
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@CALFIRE_PIO - Cal Fire's information officer
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@CAL_FIRE - general Cal Fire feed
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@CalFireUpdates - private user tweeting about Cal Fire items
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@wildlandfirecom - private user tweeting about fire related things
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- Other Twitter Users: (Not sure if these are useful yet.)
We definitely have some Facebook users out there. These links may be helpful. Facebook can suffer some posting delays, and may or may not guarantee that every user will see every post to a group or timeline, but in some - generally less urgent - cases it can be a good source of information.
- https://www.facebook.com/groups/95033neighbors/ - 95033 neighborhood FB group
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https://www.facebook.com/SantaCruzSheriffsOffice - Santa Cruz County Sheriff
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https://www.facebook.com/santaclaracountysheriff - Santa Clara County Sheriff
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https://www.facebook.com/sccfd.org - Santa Clara county fire department
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https://www.facebook.com/calfire.santaclara - Santa Clara county Cal Fire chapter
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https://www.facebook.com/pages/California-Department-of-Forestry-and-Fire-Protection/107873579240658?rf=112559388763608 - Cal Fire (statewide)
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https://www.facebook.com/CALFIRE - Another statewide Cal Fire page
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https://www.facebook.com/pages/Calfire-Updates/190788880954789 - page about Cal Fire incidents, managed by someone outside of Cal Fire, I think
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https://www.facebook.com/pages/California-State-Parks-Santa-Cruz-Fire-Management/111262572358575 - data about controlled burns run by State Parks in the Santa Cruz District
Other Useful Information Sources
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Cal Fire Web Sites - Lots of good information there, including an interactive map of major fires in the state
- http://www.fire.ca.gov/ - main site
- http://cdfdata.fire.ca.gov/incidents/incidents_current - current incident list
- http://www.fire.ca.gov/general/firemaps.php - fire map
- http://www.readyforwildfire.org/ - Cal Fire's website for helping you prepare for fires
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuCU_ubPynA_UVP4ehvOr-w - Cal Fire on YouTube
- Red Cross Mobile Apps - There are several apps that can assist with specific issues. The Wildfire app has information links to let you get data on your mobile phone, for example, and there are several others in our area that look useful. If you use an iPhone or an Android device, they look to be good things to have.
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Current Fire Danger Status
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http://lomaprietafire.org/ - always available here, or on the sign in front of CT English school on Summit Road
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http://www.wfas.net/ - The information used to change the fire danger sign in front of the school, among other things - comes from this website, specifically these pages:
- http://www.wfas.net/images/firedanger/subsets/fdc_o_cn.png - currently observed fire danger for Northern California
- http://www.wfas.net/images/firedanger/subsets/fdc_f_cn.png - forecast fire danger for the next day
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Weather Information - available from numerous online weather sites. There are many good sources, but only a couple are listed here to get you to emergency weather alerts and related items. See the Weather Information Sources page for more choices.
- http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=37.14533488513336&lon=-121.98454856872559#.Ui9foCJDuMc - the main NOAA weather site. Individual forecasts for any location. Use the map to find your home or location of interest and click on it for a pinpoint forecast. Weather related warnings and watches are posted on this site, and are specific to the location you select.
- http://www.wunderground.com/wundermap - Weather Underground Wundermap. Lots of data of various kinds available, including active fires, smoke patterns, and fire weather alerts.
- http://saratoga-weather.org/radio.php - Audio from local NWS Weather Radio KEC49 (162.550MHz) from Mount Umunhum, including timely non-weather All Hazards Warnings.
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General Emergency Information - sources for additional emergency information of various kinds.
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EDIS - California Emergency Digital Information Service. There used to be an email service with this, but it appears to have ceased working. http://edis.oes.ca.gov/
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National Tsunami Warning Center - http://ntwc.arh.noaa.gov/
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USGS Earthquake map and information - http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
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Global Disaster and Emergency Alert Map - http://hisz.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php
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National Terrorism Advisory System - http://www.dhs.gov/national-terrorism-advisory-system
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Note: quite a few of the above links were taken from from this document, maintained by the Santa Cruz County Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES). Thanks to them for their efforts!
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