Get qualified help
ActSmall · Fire is informational. For an active fire, evacuation order, or any incident, ask qualified people in your community — not this site.
Not fire-safety, evacuation, or insurance advice. Hotspots on the map are satellite detections, not evacuation zones. Use the contacts and references below.
If a fire is threatening you right now
If you see flame, smell smoke, or have been told to evacuate — follow your local emergency authority first. Do not delay to read this page.
- Your local emergency number (e.g. 112, 911, 999, 119, 000, or your country’s equivalent).
- The nearest fire station or local fire authority.
- For Australia: CFA Victoria, NSW RFS, QFES, and equivalent state services.
- For the European Union: (European Forest Fire Information System, ).
- For Canada: Canadian Wildland Fire Information System.
- For wildfires in the United States: InciWeb — official incident information from the National Wildfire Coordinating Group; and CalFire incidents for California.
- For South America and Africa: your national civil-protection or forestry agency — Brazil’s IBAMA / INPE Queimadas, Chile’s CONAF, South Africa’s DFFE and the Working on Fire programme, and equivalents elsewhere.
For evacuation orders and zones
- Sign up for your country’s public-alert system. The EU runs EU-Alert via cell broadcast; Australia has Emergency Alert; the UK uses Emergency Alerts; Canada uses Alert Ready; New Zealand uses Emergency Mobile Alert; many US counties run on Everbridge or OnSolve CodeRed — search your county name plus “emergency alert sign-up”.
- Watch your local fire authority’s social media or radio — they post evacuation orders before national news does.
- Trust an order to evacuate as authoritative. Trust an advisory as “leave now if anyone in your household needs more time.”
For defensible-space & home-hardening guidance
- Australia — CFA bushfire-survival planning and AS 3959 (construction of buildings in bushfire-prone areas) with Bushfire Attack Level () ratings.
- Canada — FireSmart Canada. The provincial framework, with assessment programmes in BC, Alberta, and Ontario.
- Europe — the EU’s Copernicus Emergency Management Service publishes fuel-management and prevention guidance; many Mediterranean countries (Greece, Portugal, Spain) have national WUI codes derived from it.
- Firewise — firewise.org. The reference framework for the 0–5 / 5–30 / 30–100 ft zones, used in the US and adapted in Canada, Australia, and beyond.
- CalFire Ready for Wildfire — readyforwildfire.org. Step-by-step checklists and a free home-assessment service in most California counties.
- Wildfire Prepared Home — ibhs.org. The independent insurance-industry standard for hardened homes (US-anchored, methodology transferable).
- Your local fire-safe council or wildland-fire department offers free property assessments in many regions.
For insurance questions
- Ask your insurer for the , vent-mesh, ember-blocking credits they offer; many do, and you have to ask for them.
- Your country’s national insurance regulator publishes consumer guides — the EU’s EIOPA, the UK’s FCA, Australia’s ASIC / Insurance Council of Australia, Canada’s IBC, the US National Association of Insurance Commissioners, and equivalents.
- For wildfire-area insurance availability problems — California’s state-backed FAIR Plan is the US insurer of last resort (consumer guide at the California Department of Insurance); Australia and parts of southern Europe have analogous pool arrangements run through national insurance councils.
External organisations linked elsewhere on this site are independent third parties; ActSmall does not control their content. Always defer to qualified local help.