The NSW Rural Fire Service used to have a web page and an app for portable devices called Fires Near Me. It quickly showed you where reported fires were and their status etc. Except for incidents not being shown because they hadn’t been reported (which there is nothing to do with software) it worked pretty well.
That app has now been replaced by Hazards Near Me, which still has fires but now incorporates floods, despite being run by the RFS. There is the promise that other hazards will be added in due course. All this sounds pretty good.
You can read reviews from others there but my problems are:
When I turn on my Android tablet with the app installed it gives me notification of new hazards within my watch zone. A watch zone is a circle on the map the user specifies, you can have more than one but I don’t. The problem is that when I then open the app much of the time the hazard in the notification doesn’t exist!
If I have the web page, supposedly with the same data, open on my Windows PC it disagrees with the Android app. For example right now, the web page shows a fire at Yaccaba head Hawks Nest, where the Android app doesn’t. I have made sure to update them both together and this makes no difference.
When you open the Android app it used to centre the map on my watch zone, now it doesn’t and I have to manually go and find it. This is fairly minor but why break a feature that used to work?
I’m using it on an iOS device and so far its working as described. I’ve received notifications of fires in my watch zone nearly every day (I need to reduce the size of the watch zone, really)
I could be wrong but I thought that even the previous Fires Near Me could show floods and other hazards.
I guess a rename of the app could make sense to reflect its new, more general scope. However it seems that it is not just a rename but a breakage rewrite.
I don’t have the app installed. I just use the web site.
I have the app installed on an ios device (iPad) and find that there are a lot of short term fire events in my watch area that are quickly resolved. If I go in and check my notifications the issue is generally marked resolved. It takes a while to have the app icon alert go off and only after viewing the alert in detail. I suggest the externally indicated alert on the app icon go away once there are no longer any active alerts, leaving a history of alerts internal to the app.
Topic title updated as this App is specific to NSW, to assist with future searches by topic.
Noted each State/territory has differing approaches to providing similar information, or not at all.
I installed it a few days ago. The area where CHOICE is located is prone to flooding. My partner and I are also planning a trip to northern NSW and thought that the app might prove useful.
A question for those already using the app, does it give notifications dependant on your current location, or only within the watch zone that you specify ?
It is time for an update. My Android copy of the app has now had at least one version increment. The result is:
The app now opens the map on my watch zone as the old Fires Near Me did.
The problem with alerts staying and not being dismissed has been fixed, once you view a notification it no longer appears again.
The problem with notified incidents in your watch zone not being visible on the map is no longer happening as far as I can tell.
So it looks like the elves are working away on it. Perhaps they could have tested it better before releasing it. But if its good enough for Microsoft to get the paying public to debug their software why not the RFS?
There are still discrepancies between the Android and web version. The web version is still called Fires Near Me but includes (at least) some floods. However there seems to be a disagreement over which incidents to show in each still. At the moment there are 30 on Android and 54 on the web page within NSW. The web version seems to show an additional group but I don’t understand just why this is.
Already using the app on android. Terrible compared to the old RFS app which you could always rely on.
I’m in a bushfire flame zone. Today risk is very high/extreme. Have had a couple of notifications from my watch zone. Helicopter was flying overhead, so I checked the app. The app wasn’t working… it says there’s a ‘server error’. Hmmm.
Needs to be better all round… slow, clunky & unreliable
It appears that the issue may be with the Android version. I have the iOS version on my iPhone & iPad and both work well, as did the original Fires Near Me.
