The NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) has provided an RSS feed with the latest updates on bush fires in NSW for a while now, and it’s a geoRSS feed with lat/long data included so you can see where each incident happens.  However it wasn’t until this week, when their incident and major updates feeds were included in the data.australia.gov.au repository that I noticed something else.  They don’t just have a location point for each fire, they have the actual boundary coordinates included.

This means that Google Maps can create a polygon overlay of each fire, showing its size and location.  I’ve included it in Google Maps, you can see it here.  Each place marker includes useful information like description of the location, what council area it’s in, what type of fire it is and the latest updates.

But additionally, if you zoom into one of the incidents, you can see the outline of the location of the fire and really get a feel for its size and what property it’s near.

After the devastation of last season’s bushfires, and the fact that this season is expected to be very b