When my house and community burned - where was the satellite information? A very raw blog post I am putting up so folks in the satellite, geospatial and tech fields can listen firsthand why I think we are failing the situations that need us the most. www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-o... - ThreadSky

briannaritapagan.bsky.social • 40 days ago

When my house and community burned - where was the satellite information? A very raw blog post I am putting up so folks in the satellite, geospatial and tech fields can listen firsthand why I think we are failing the situations that need us the most.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-our-community-burned-where-satellite-information-pag%C3%A1n-phd-8rxwf/?trackingId=%2FKCJcVemRTq7Lg91wkullQ%3D%3D

Comments

getbounds.bsky.social•40 days ago

💯 where is the high res SAR data our industry has been gushing about for the last several years...zero images in my feed from Umbra or others. It's too expensive, tied to an economic model that has a limited clientele

felinecannon.bsky.social•39 days ago

I’m curious if the commercial satellite corporations did sell a lot to other corporations involved in real estate, development, insurance, …. Seems like one reason they might be stingy with public data release.

casaotomi.bsky.social•25 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/globalecoguy.bsky.social/post/3lgu4dwbg2s2w

postholer.com•39 days ago

...
Questons.

With any and all data magically available, how would it have changed the outcome?

Given such anomalously volatile conditions, what, exactly, could have been done?

Forecasts for severe winds, red flag warnings were posted. We all knew beforehand.

postholer.com•39 days ago

No amount of data, regardless of quality or availability, would have changed the outcome. Simple fact.

As you noted, winds were 70 mph, fire leaped by the second. No way could data processing/dissemination react to that.

Your timely received GO notice was all that mattered, and it worked...

(tbc)

briannaritapagan.bsky.social•39 days ago

The fire started about 12 hours before reaching our home, there were no updates for 6 hours before burning. We listened to the warnings and left but some people did not and lost their life, many others stayed much longer not knowing where the fire was at hoping to save their homes.

postholer.com•39 days ago

You can be assured those who were tasked with fire suppression and fire location had exactly the info they needed. Did they not issue evacuation orders well in advance?

For an evacuated resident, not having that info was an *inconvenience*, nothing more.

briannaritapagan.bsky.social•39 days ago

We can respectfully disagree - I do not have the energy or interest to argue arbitrarily on the internet right now.

postholer.com•39 days ago

Every resident was warned with weather forecasts, red flag warnings and ultimately, evacuation orders.

*No one lost their lives due to lack of information*

Suggesting a lack of information is a HUGE disservice to those who did *exactly* what was required, in abundance.

briannaritapagan.bsky.social•38 days ago

this came out today: https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/16/us/evacuation-warnings-vulnerabilities-la-fires/index.html

postholer.com•38 days ago

I just read the article, thanks for passing it along!

The dissemination of the data was the issue, not lack of information. Perceived lack of information, I believe, was your original concern.

No new GIS/remote sensed data would have fixed this. Authorities had all the info they needed.

briannaritapagan.bsky.social•39 days ago

No information of where an active raging fire is for 12+ hours in a densely populated wildland urban interface seems like a failure to me. And if you’ve never waited up for 48 hours refreshing every news and map to see if you lost everything - you might have a different opinion.

dpmanchee.bsky.social•40 days ago

Sorry to hear.

Copernicus #Sentinel2 made an overpass on 2nd Jan 2025 ↙️ Burn scar from Palisades 1st Jan fire visible. Overpass on 7th shows this took hold again ↘️ Was this a zombie fire that was reignited when the Santa Ana winds came ?

NB 🇪🇺 Copernicus generates NRT Fire Radiative Power products.

dpmanchee.bsky.social•40 days ago

Copernicus #Sentinel2 data can be accessed via

- Copernicus Browser https://bsky.app/profile/dpmanchee.bsky.social/post/3lfmpxqun6k2f

- Planet EO Browser (portal acquired from Sinergise)
- NASA portals such as Worldview

briannaritapagan.bsky.social•40 days ago

Hi Dominic thank you - I’m aware of those data sources. If you read the blog post my focus is real time and commercial imagery providers. Unfortunately NASA FIRMS dashboard and Sentinel products are not meeting the on the ground information need.

jcashell89.bsky.social•40 days ago

100% agree. My parents were evacuated and were so upset about their home potentially being gone. I was frantically trying to find good real-time satellite data.

When I couldn’t, my mom’s response was “I thought we were more advanced than this”

geostien.bsky.social•40 days ago

Even if they had these data, they would not share with the public in real time because that would lead to people making their own interpretations and ignore evaluation orders. In crises what you want is for the people in charge to have the best possible information so they can make the decisions.

maryhenrygeo.bsky.social•40 days ago

I'm so sorry that you lost your house and neighborhood. And I'm also sorry that the realtime data still don't exist for these fires.

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