As Katya and I headed out on Friday afternoon June 20 for the Calaveras County Passport Weekend we noticed a smoke plume starting to rise in the Santa Cruz Mountains.  When we arrived at the motel in Angels Camp smoke was starting to rise above the hills south of town.  Bad start but a great time wine tasting and munching in the park in Murphys that evening.

While the Calaveras County Passport Weekend was a blast it was also the weekend that a lightning storm started over 1,700 wildfires in Northern California.  One of those became the Basin Complex fire near Big Sur.  I have backpacked and done volunteer trail work in the Ventana Wilderness since the early 60′s.  Lately I’ve been leading Ventana Wilderness Alliance trail crews up the Little Sur River to restore that beautiful trail.

I started locating fire-related information  online and mapping it with Google Earth. I mentioned my map data Web location on the VWA forum which had become the default forum for discussing the fire.  At the height of the fire I estimate from site stats and feedback that I was informing upwards of 15,000 people directly and more through bloggers.

I was able to get access to data on government servers and have the most complete map available.  As the popularity increased I built http://disasterpost.net as a tool for future major incidents.  During this hectic time I had no time for Wine Questers but I expect to return to it soon.  I’m preparing Disaster Post to be presented to the California Office of Emergency Services as a better mass communication platform than anything that exists.  It is far more than just the map overlays.

- jim

Hard to believe that this wasn’t allowed before since many wineries offer wines-by-the-glass and most let you buy a bottle to consume in a picnic area.  So last Wednesday Arnold signed a law to let us do this legally.  Good to get that over with.  Thanks legislature and governor!

- jim