Do you turn off "location access" in all the apps that don't need it?

There's often a survey marker or benchmark under the markers.

When they were doing the county survey, I accidentally found a few of ground markers in remote locations, but mostly the "X" was painted on roadways, parking lots, etc. Temporary markers tend to mysteriously move or disappear.

Yep. Aerial survey and mapping.

Yup. They're blue and white instead of black and white, which is mostly shown, and they're on bald outcrops in various places in these hills.

I wonder if someone comes by to clean them up?

Since where "I" hike, nobody else does, I never see "trash" per se, but I do see popped balloons (especially the silvery kind) and these markers.

But I never see soda pop or beer bottles when I'm off the trail (which is all the time I hike).

Well then, our area of the hills was recently surveyed. They can use that survey to figure out how much was destroyed in the fire, since some of the places I hike have been burned already in today's fire.

Incidentally, getting accurate fire map information to the public is a problem. I can't find anything that shows a recent fire perimeter for the Loma Prieta fire. That's typical. In 2009, we had the Lockheed fire, where I decided to do something about the problem. I'll spare you the details but color prints of the most recent fire maps started mysteriously appearing on a sheet of plywood in front of a local Felton supermarket. I created some fairly crude, but useful maps, much to the irritation of some of the officials. About all I got out of it was a tour of the cartography (mapping) trailer at the staging area. I got a good picture of the problems involved in creating accurate maps, offered some suggestions, and was given a solemn promise that things will improve. Of course, nothing happened or improved.

I also did something stupid. I have Cal Fire my email address and was immediately added to the mailing list of the fire spammers. Seven years later, I'm still receiving fire related email spam.

Anyway, these are mostly overlays for Google Earth showing the fire perimeter and progression: This is the last one of the series: If you don't have Google Earth, it looks something like this when rotated: Very useful if you want a clue how close the fire is to your home or if it's safe to return.

Thanks for that last map, as I'm not using Google Earth at the moment (it keeps crashing on Linux).

As you noted, we're all passing maps back and forth, but your map is nicely detailed, because what matters to us is mostly the area burned, the area threatened, the area evacuated, and the roads closed.

If evacuated, the evacuation route and the holding centers are of prime importance. We have had a ton of the blue and white signs going up in the neighborhood, so, they're getting us ready as we type.

Here is a great picture taken from an airplane, of the mushroom cloud I saw on the first day, but from a far better angle than I saw it then.

This is what happens thanks to such kludges in GPS location: "Witnesses called 911 and told a dispatcher paramedics were

exact address, the dispatcher said he was unable to send help. Eventually an ambulance was dispatched to the wrong address, according to court papers. It ultimately took paramedics nearly 20 minutes to reach

Note that the witnesses were calling from the soccer field, where a GPS location from the cell phones should have produced a usable Lat-Long location. After all, soccer fields are in the open, where the GPS has a good view of the sky. Yet, the dispatcher was apparently trying to obtain a non-existent physical address from the callers, instead of using GPS location. I don't know exactly why, but my guess(tm) is that past history of using cell phone GPS location by the department probably produced less than useful results. After such incidents, it's really difficult for me to swallow the pitch line that more accurate E911 and NG911 location information is specifically for emergency services instead of tracking ones movements.

Notice that the article continues: "Since then, the LAFD has changed its dispatch system to include addresses for all schools within the city of Los Angeles, according to a department spokesman." which again suggests that the 911 dispatchers consider a callers physical street address more accurate and more accurate than a GPS location from a cell phone. All this confirms what I've suspected for a long time, that PSAPs (public safety answering points) do not use GPS cell phone location information.

WTF? That made sense back in 1985 but now?

Which part of what I wrote doesn't make sense today?

This might help explain why mobile 911 calls go to the CHP: If you're not in California, the situation might be different.

It would be no use to me. Here it is 112.

I meant that researching NG911 would demonstrate clearly to you that VoIP is considered reliable enough in the USA.

As for 112, you can expect that to follow what the USA does, to a large extent, some way down the road.

Dave