Questions about FireRadar, answered

FireRadar is Canada's wildfire map: an independent Canada-wide interface that prioritizes direct official wildfire incidents where public jurisdiction feeds are available, uses explicitly labelled national continuity when needed, and keeps satellite, smoke, air-quality, and historical context distinct.

No. FireRadar is an independent situational-awareness product and does not issue evacuation orders or emergency instructions. For urgent decisions, follow the responsible provincial, territorial, municipal, Indigenous, or emergency-management authority.

Sources can publish at different times, use different status definitions, or include different record types. FireRadar prioritizes direct jurisdiction incidents, can use explicitly labelled CWFIS national continuity when direct coverage is unavailable or degraded, and keeps NASA satellite hotspots separate so unlike datasets are not silently added together.

FireRadar refreshes source data on its own ingestion schedule, but the meaningful freshness also depends on when the responsible source last published an update. Fire cards keep agency/source update time separate from when FireRadar retrieved the record.

When the responsible source publishes a suspected or reported cause, FireRadar shows it directly on the fire card. Cause information can change as an investigation develops, and FireRadar leaves it unavailable rather than guessing when the source does not publish one.

No. NASA FIRMS hotspots are satellite thermal detections. They can support wildfire awareness, but they are not confirmed incident records or exact fire perimeters and can include repeated detections or other heat sources.

No. The smoke layer is based on Environment and Climate Change Canada's FireWork forecast model. It is model guidance about wildfire-smoke PM2.5, not a direct measurement of what a person is breathing at a specific location.

AQHI is an observed or forecast health-risk index based on multiple air pollutants. Wildfire smoke can affect AQHI, but AQHI is not a wildfire-smoke-only measurement. FireRadar keeps AQHI and FireWork smoke as separate layers for that reason.

FireRadar's retained daily incident/perimeter observation archive begins July 20, 2026. Older official historical records can be shown or analyzed separately, but FireRadar does not relabel older agency datasets as observations FireRadar made before the service existed.

No. A missing or incomplete FireRadar archive day is treated as unavailable coverage, never as zero wildfire activity. FireRadar retains source-coverage and capture-health context so later analysis can distinguish a successful zero from a missing observation.

The history foundation retains normalized daily incident observations, append-only incident changes, immutable raw-source payload versions, source-run coverage, perimeter versions, satellite hotspot history, and separate air-quality and smoke-model history. That lets future products be derived without rewriting the original observation record.

No. Current live wildfire state must never be written under an older observation date. Historical repairs are only supportable when retained evidence from that period can prove what was observed, and provenance must remain explicit.

No. The core wildfire map and public information remain available without an account. A free account adds cloud-synced Saved items, account-based history access, and limited monitoring features.

FireRadar Plus extends a free account with more Saved capacity, more monitored places, additional alert conditions, retained alert history, and other convenience features. It does not put the core public wildfire map behind a paywall.

FireRadar creates a fire-specific map link that preserves the selected incident and location. Supported link previews use the fire name so recipients can tell which incident was shared before opening the map.