As LA fights fires, Australian official urges more help from social media platforms

Alasdair Pal - Reuters - 14/01
The Australian head of the world's largest volunteer firefighting force said on Tuesday a refusal by social media firms to give emergency services free access to its data was hindering responders globally, as wildfires continued to rip through Los Angeles.
  • Social media firms refuse free data access to emergency services, RFS says
  • RFS's Athena software could improve with social media data integration
  • API fees for data access exceed emergency services' budget
SYDNEY, Jan 14 (Reuters) - The Australian head of the world's largest volunteer firefighting force said on Tuesday a refusal by social media firms to give emergency services free access to its data was hindering responders globally, as wildfires continued to rip through Los Angeles.
Rob Rogers, Commissioner of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (RFS), said companies including Elon Musk's X and Meta (META.O), opens new tab, which owns Facebook and Instagram, could save lives by giving first responders back-end access to data.
The RFS runs a network of some 74,000 volunteer firefighters and full-time staff protecting one of the world's most fire-prone regions.
Australia suffered a catastrophic series of wildfires in 2019-2020 known as "Black Summer", which destroyed an area the size of Turkey and killed 33 people, the majority in New South Wales.
In response, the RFS commissioned Athena, a software program named after the Greek goddess of wisdom and protector of cities, that uses artificial intelligence to predict where fires might spread.
The program could be made more powerful by better integrating it with posts from social media users on wil...
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