California, Washington, and Oregon are currently fighting wildfires peppering the Cascades and coastal ranges. Twitter was afire with photos of an eerie orange sky from the smoke blowing across the peninsula toward the Pacific.
Here are some highlights I flagged from around the Twitterverse:
Obligatory SF-from-Alameda-Point shot this afternoon + an eerie tree from my fav local beach. pic.twitter.com/aTHol2dqXy
This is a great narrative story from the Wall Street Journal about the current situation in California with PG&E, the rolling blackouts, and the wildfires ravaging the state. Drone video, maps, data on fire risk and infrastructure paint a pretty grim picture of the problem. It’ll take years for PG&E to catch up to where there’s anything resembling a long-term solution to this problem.
We’ve been supporting the Santa Barbara County Sheriff through Fulcrum Community this year for evacuation reporting during emergency preparation and response. It feels great to have technology that can have real-world immediate impact like this. The gist of their workflow (right now) is using the app to log where evacuation orders were posted, where they haven’t notified yet, and tracking that with the slim resources available even in time of need. Centralizing the reporting has made a big difference:
All of this information is uploaded in real time and is accessible to incident commanders who can follow the progress...
I don’t remember what got me to it, but the other day I found this short documetary video about Southern California’s Salton Sea, a saline lake about 80 miles inland from San Diego:
I knew about its infamy as a failed resort destination, with planned developments like Desert Shores and Salton City that popped up on its edge in the 1950s. What I didn’t know was the sea’s history as the result of an engineering accident, induced by the California Development Company trying to divert...
We just touched down in San Jose this afternoon, here for the SaaStr Annual conference. An uneventful flight through LAX, arriving around 1pm local time here in California. One of my favorite things about westbound travel is the ability to get here with enough time to check things out the same day.
As I like to do with a new city, I got out on the road for a run to explore a little. The Guadalupe River runs through downtown San Jose right near where I’m...
