Out-of-control wildfires swept across southern California this past fall, leaving in their path death and destruction. Twenty raging brush fires were fanned by strong winds that quickly spread to seven counties. Homes were burned to the ground, hundreds of acres of forest were destroyed, and thousands of people were left homeless. A precise method was needed to help in locating and assisting displaced people. In response, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sought the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Geographic Information System (GIS) expertise and capability. The Corps had used its GIS expertise on several past missions, including during Hurricane Katrina and on 9/11 at the World Trade Center. The maps helped FEMA to identify territories in the scorched counties affected and to help locate displaced people requiring assistance, such as temporary trailers, and to protect the state from potential safety hazards that can result from these fires in the future. The mission continued to move forward in December with the help of these GIS maps, which cover the 500,000 acres of land that were burned. Stephen McDevitt, GIS expert with the Army Corps' New York District, is one of the national action officers responsible for deploying and managing GIS teams throughout southern California to assist FEMA and other federal, state, and volunteer organizations. "GIS is a computer-based information system and tool for analysis of spatial data," said McDevitt. "The GIS takes data from various sources, such as aerial photographs, drawings, and electronic geographic data, and combines these layers of information in various ways as overlays to perform spatial analysis and produce an electronic map that depicts the results of that analysis."
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