How to Use Firewatch

Pick your area with the County selector in the top bar — individual counties, all of Washington, or the BC border zone.

Flame icons are active dispatches; red outlines are official mapped fire perimeters. Colored dots are satellite heat detections — bright orange is fresh (under 12 h), amber is 12–24 h, grey is older.

Shaded zones are evacuation levels: green = Level 1 (Ready), orange = Level 2 (Set), red = Level 3 (Go now). Tap any zone or its zone-number pill (e.g. A1330) for details, including road closures inside it.

Use the Layers menu (top-left of the map) to toggle hotspots, aircraft, cameras, lightning, smoke forecast, Live Wind arrows, Rain Radar, and more. The Legend button decodes every symbol.

Tap the 🔍 next to + Info Pin to search any address or town — the map flies there and drops a temporary marker. The same search lives on every map, including the pin-drop menus.

Refresh in the top bar pulls the latest from every source; the timestamp next to it shows data age.

The Trending chip (next to the status filters) shows only fires that grew in the last 24 hours — the ones worth watching today.

The 📷 camera button (top-left, next to search) copies a screenshot of your exact map view to the clipboard — paste it straight into a Facebook post with Ctrl+V. Every capture is stamped with the Firewatch watermark and timestamp.

The 📏 ruler button measures in miles: first click starts the tape, second click locks the distance, keep clicking to extend it leg by leg. Esc or the ruler button clears it.

Turn on the Lightning layer and click any strike to pin its tooltip — pin several at once, then hit the camera button to capture them all in one shot.

Tap the ★ button in the top bar, then Add Location.

Search an address or town — or paste coordinates directly. Both 48.9059, -119.0113 and 48°54'21.2"N 119°00'40.7"W work.

Pick an alert radius (5–50 mi) and save. Your pin appears on the map with its radius ring.

To remove a pin, tap it on the map and hit Remove pin, or manage the list from the ★ menu.

Open any incident and tap Follow.

The Following panel on the Live Map lists your fires with live distance and direction from your saved location — measured to the nearest edge of the fire perimeter, not the center.

A dashed line on the map connects your pin to the fire's edge, labeled with mileage and when the perimeter was last mapped.

Tap ✕ in the panel to unfollow, or the crosshair to fly the map to the fire.

Tap Enable Alerts when prompted (or from the ★ saved-locations panel) and allow notifications.

You'll be warned about: new evacuation levels near you, fire activity inside your saved-location radius, rapid growth (fire doubles within 24 h), a followed fire's edge moving a mile-plus closer to home, two large fires converging toward a complex, and lightning clusters — 3+ strikes near a saved location within 30 minutes.

A morning briefing arrives around 8 AM and an evening recap around 8 PM during active periods.

Tap any fire for the full picture: operational status, mapped acres vs. reported acres, weather at the fire, spread direction analysis, nearby cameras, and scanner audio.

The Summary button opens a plain-language AI-written briefing in a new window — size, containment, evacuations, closures — with its own Share button.

Use "Is your place in the line of fire?" to drop your address on the incident map and see distance, bearing, and whether the spread points your way.

On the incident map, toggle Older hotspots and Evac zones (top-right chips) to declutter the view.

Log in (or join) to post observations to any incident's operations log. Write in paragraphs — Enter starts a new one.

Verified reporters can attach up to 4 photos; shots with GPS data drop as pins on the map automatically.

Edit fixes your own post (an "edited" tag appears). marks a report as read — everyone can see who's seen it.

Want the verified badge? Apply from your profile — local reporters, ham operators, and fire-adjacent folks welcome.

Verified reporters and staff can drop Info Pins on the map — shelters, closures, warnings — choosing an icon (Info, Fire, Evac, Caution, Road Closed, Shelter) plus up to 2 photos and a link.

Cameras shows the WA DNR / Pano wildfire camera network — nearest cameras also appear on each incident page.

Live Scanner embeds Broadcastify dispatch audio so you can listen to fire traffic.

History holds the incident archive with a heatmap of past seasons.

Android / Chrome: open the site, tap the ⋮ menu → Add to Home screen → Install.

iPhone / Safari: tap the share square → Add to Home Screen → Add.

Windows / Chrome or Edge: click the install icon at the right end of the address bar (small monitor with a down arrow) → Install. Firewatch gets its own window plus a Start menu and desktop icon.

It launches full-screen, gets push alerts, and updates itself. No app store needed.

Every incident, and the site itself, has a Share button — links unfurl with a live map preview card in texts and social posts. The top-bar Share menu can also post straight to Facebook with a pre-written caption.

The NWCC and NIFC Morning Briefs (More tab) have their own share buttons — the copied caption includes the day's stats, and the link opens the full report in a large pop-out right on the app.

From your ★ saved locations, Share My Status makes a daily check-in card — nearest fire, distance from your place, and a QR code — so friends and family know you're okay with one post.

Sharing during an active fire is genuinely useful: neighbors without the app see current acreage and evacuation levels at a glance.