Earlier this year, an entrepreneur based in northern British Columbia launched a free app in response to rising wildfires in Canada.
Jeff Parr, a former oil sector employee and self-taught coder, says WildFire Ready keeps users informed by pulling live data from official feeds (such as BC Wildfire Service, DriveBC, and EmergencyInfoBC) and displaying it on a single map.
The platform—which Parr describes as a “passion project that turned into a mission”—shows satellite hotspots as detected by NASA, as well as Air Quality Health Index readings from Environment and Climate Change Canada monitoring stations, and offers other features such as smart push notifications for specific alerts, different visual themes, saved locations for quick access, and AI-powered summaries of what’s going on in a particular region.
WildFire Ready is a member of the BC Tech Association.
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One flagship feature is known as “WatchTower,” in which a person pins a place of importance to then receive a “tower-level briefing” on the site, from nearby fires and road closures to local air quality and regional ban information.
“What I’m proudest of is how the app gets built,” says Parr.
On the tech side, that includes leveraging React Native, Firebase, Railway, Mapbox, MapLibre, Cloudflare, and more.
On the features side, “it’s been shaped almost entirely by the people who use it,” he says.
“They send ideas, gaps, and hard-won local knowledge,” Parr explains, who aims to convert feedback into tangible product features “often within days.”
Parr’s operation remains lean and bootstrapped: He comprises the entire workforce and his business is supported through sponsorship and donations.
Regardless, the WildFire Ready app has received nearly 6,000 downloads throughout Canada and the U.S., he says, where it now functions across 18 states “from Alaska to Texas.”
And Parr, whose family has “been on this land for generations,” says his passion project continues to see hundreds of new downloads every day.
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