Features for fire agencies
Everything an agency needs to publish burn status, know who is burning, and keep residents and responders informed. Your agency decides; the platform carries the decision everywhere it is needed.
Status and rules
- Zones. Draw or import the areas you govern. Overlaps with other agencies are expected: every covering agency takes part in the answer, and the most restrictive rule wins. You are warned when two of your own zones disagree.
- Seasons. Set the dates burning is open, inclusive and in your agency's time zone. A season can run across the new year (for example, November 1 to March 31) without being split. A seasonal zone with no season saved is closed, never open by default.
- Alerts. Post OK, Info, Warning or Alert. Only an Alert closes burning. Alerts last 1 hour, 4 hours, until the end of the day (midnight in your time zone), 24 hours, until further notice, or until a time you choose. A regional closure cannot be undone by a local agency, and an OK alert never cascades to the agencies below you.
- Activity types and times. Status is answered per kind of burning (debris, agricultural and others) and per time window, including hourly windows, weekend and holiday rules, and closures scheduled ahead.
- Response agencies. Mark which agency responds at each place. Several can overlap, such as a structural fire district and a wildland agency, and residents see all of them.
- Fail-safe answers. There are four outcomes: Not allowed, Contact agency, Unknown and Allowed. Allowed is shown only when every authority has explicitly allowed burning. Missing or stale information never turns into a green answer.
Status Control and roles
Status Control is the console for the people who open and close burning. Close burning, cancel a closure, post or clear an advisory, schedule a closure or restrict an activity, from a phone, in a few taps. Each action is a plain form that works without JavaScript, asks for confirmation when it matters, and is recorded with who did it.
Your team uses three standard roles:
| Role | Can do |
|---|---|
| Admin | Everything for your agency, including your team and settings |
| Staff | Day-to-day work: zones, seasons, alerts and registrations |
| Status Controller | Status Control only: open, close and advise |
Access across agencies is an explicit grant, for example from a district to its county or to a contractor. Grants can expire, can be revoked at any time, and are audited.
Registrations and permits
- Registrations. Residents register the day they plan to burn. A registration never grants permission: on the day, the burner checks in, and check-in works only if the live status is Allowed at that moment. You choose whether check-in is required or optional.
- Presumed burns. When a registered day arrives and the burner has not said "I'm not burning", the burn is shown to you and on your feed as a likely burn. If you close burning, registrations for that day stay visible and are flagged as possible burns during a closure.
- Questions asked once. Terms and questions come from a shared standard library, with your own questions added on top. When several agencies require the same item, the resident answers it once. Every registration records exactly which version was accepted.
- Permits. Agencies that issue permits can require a valid permit for an activity before registration. A permit never makes a location green: the live status still governs on the day. Agencies that issue permits outside the platform can use the Contact agency status instead.
- The registrations workspace. List, filter, search, map and export the burns in your area, with the contact details needed to respond.
Badges and embeds
Add live burn status, fire danger and alerts to your own website, or let community partners add them to theirs. The badge is an iframe that needs no script, shows text and icons as well as colour, respects reduced-motion settings, sets no cookies and loads no trackers. If the status cannot be checked, the badge says Unknown and names your agency.
Badge snippets already installed on agency websites keep working without changes. Integrators move to the new badge on a published schedule.
How to add a badge · Apply for a badge for a partner website
Feeds and API
- Your burn feed. Today's burns in your area in JSON and CSV, for Intterra, ArcGIS Online, Tablet Command, First Due and other tools. A token protects the feed; you can issue, rotate or revoke it, and changes take effect at once. Your agency opts in.
- No changes for current integrations. Existing feed addresses, tokens and field names keep working, so a dispatch setup already reading your feed does not break.
- One public API. Feeds are views of one versioned public API, scoped to your agency with or without the agencies below it, to a zone, or to a state.
Notifications
One notification system covers text messages, email, app notifications and in-app messages, with consent, channel preferences, quiet hours and a delivery record.
- Burners with a planned or presumed burn get a courtesy "do not burn" notice when the status turns Not allowed.
- Agencies can text active burners in their district in one action, from approved templates. Recipients can reply STOP at any time.
- Residents can subscribe to status changes for the places they care about.
- Your agency is notified of new registrations.
Notifications are a courtesy. The safety rule is always the live status when someone burns.
Data and privacy
- The burner sees everything about their own burns.
- Your agency and the response agencies covering a burn see the identity and contact details needed to respond, limited to your area. The burner agrees to this at registration.
- Feeds to your dispatch or GIS systems carry the same details, limited to your area, only when your agency opts in.
- State agencies, sponsors and statewide reports see aggregated or de-identified data only, unless a state agency is acting as a response authority and opts in.
- The public never sees individual burn locations or identities, only counts and heat maps.
- Raw address lookups are kept for 90 days, then only totals are kept. Residents can export or delete their own data at any time.
Accessibility and languages
Every resident page, agency screen, badge and embed is built to WCAG 2.1 AA. Everything residents see is available in English and Spanish. Agency screens are in English at first.
Security
The platform is built for SOC 2 readiness: data kept separate per organization, encryption at rest and in transit, an audit trail that cannot be altered, least-privilege access, tested backups and documented incident response. A SOC 2 audit is a future goal; we do not claim one. The availability target for status lookups, badges and feeds is 99.9%.