Montana News
Looking for timely, reliable wildfire info? Here's how we find it
With Montana News, I'm Elinor Smith. As wildfire season heats up across Montana, it can feel hard to keep up or know where to find the most reliable up-to-date information. Montana Public Radio news director Corinne Cates Kearney sat down with host Austin Amestoy to talk about how and why MTPR covers wildfires. So we obviously don't cover every single fire that starts in our listening area, but we do report on some of them. So how do you make that call as our editor? Right, so 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 and how it can impact those things. There are more ways that we cover wildfire and firefighting efforts, but that public safety element is really 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. There's a we have someone on call over the weekend. That was you this last weekend. Maybe you can tell listeners what that looked like for you. Sure, Corinne. So it was a pretty quiet weekend until Sunday afternoon. Of course, that was when the Miller Peak Fire flared up on the Lolo National Forest southeast of Missoula. And how did you first find out about that fire? Well, our first resource these days for most new fire starts is an app called Watch Duty. That app 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. That's a little bit less than 40 minutes after the blaze was first reported to dispatchers. And a note here for listeners, MTPR doesn't sponsor Watch Duty or vice versa. We're talking about it because it's a part of our reporting process and it's a tool that nonjournalists can also use to track wildfire information. And as we use it as journalists, we're also verifying that information post on the app with an official source like a local sheriff's office or regional national forest. Yes, absolutely. And I actually called up Nick Russell to learn a little bit 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. And that's that crucial information about new fires like evacuation notices is often delivered at the county level, not uniformly 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. Russell told me most counties just don't have the resources to build a centralized, intuitive place for fire information. And that's where Watch Duty came into the picture. After a fires first reported, a team of volunteers trained to monitor wildfires report updates on evacuation notices, the fires size, shelter locations and more. And it's all displayed on a map on the app that's pretty easy to navigate. And even if it's just a new smoke plume listeners may hear us cover that too, even if it's not immediately threatening anything just to let people know what's going on and where it's located. And after the initial breaking news of the Miller peak fire, it started. It's probably gonna burn for weeks to come. Can you talk about how coverage of that fire will shift? - Right, so now that the Miller peak fire is established, we'll continue to post updates on its size, the resources responding to the fire and other non-breaking news to our website. We may broadcast some of that information too 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's that life-saving information we talked about earlier. And that pattern will continue for all major fires in our listening area until the season winds down. - And most of the tools we use to learn about wildfires are available to anyone, but the verification of that information is important. So it's known that the information is coming from a trusted source. - That's right, Corin. And MTPR collects and verifies the fire news we air for our listeners, but they have access to literally all the tools that we use to do that as well. We talked about watch duty. There's also the state's MTFireInfo.org site. They both consolidate a lot of wildfire info in one place. Remember, you can also 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 NCWeb that gathers all relevant information about the fire in one central place. We're talking maps, announcements, reports from fire managers, photos, videos, and even more. To follow MTPR's wildfire coverage and daily updates, you can just head to mtpr.org or tune in on your radio. - Austin, thank you. - You bet. - This is Montana Public Radio.