Online Dispatch, Scanner and Related Data Sources

Email Information Sources

  • 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.

  • 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.

Twitter

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.

  • Covering Our Local Area:

    • @jrpstonecarver - information about major events in our area only (nothing off topic). Things you might leave work for, or call home about.

    • @calfireczu - information from Santa Cruz county fire. Brand new as of this writing, but seems to be focused on the county.

    • @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.

    • @firedispatchsc - twitter - the dispatch center covering the cities and other parts of Santa Cruz county not covered by the Cal Fire dispatch in Felton.

    • @NativeSantaCruz - a Santa Cruz resident who monitors a scanner and tweets about events that can impact us, along with other things.

    • @jcopeland_sc - Santa Cruz Sentinel reporter who tweets story links, some of which include information about incidents in our area.

    •  @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.

  • Covering Cal Fire statewide:
  • Other Twitter Users: (Not sure if these are useful yet.)

    • @CHP_HQ - CHP

    • @sccounty - Santa Cruz county government - not used since 2011 as of this writing

    • @SCCgov - Santa Clara county government

Facebook

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.

Other Useful Information Sources

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!

 

Back to Emergency Information

Edit tags