Wildfire, the four-year old mobile app currently used by over 300,000 students on over 200 college campuses to stay informed about local news as it happens, today launched Coronavirus Alerts for Cities, a new service that sends local alerts about the Coronavirus exclusively from verified local news outlets and government sources based on your location. Wildfire is also extending its free service to everyone in the United States to allow more people to receive verified local news about their own communities in real-time.
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The Wildfire app (1) sends real-time Coronavirus notifications for your city. (2) sources local and national credible updates in one place. (3) allows you to follow close friends to get updates near them. (Graphic: Business Wire)
“Over the past six weeks thousands of students and university employees have been posting on Wildfire about how the Coronavirus is impacting their local area,” said Wildfire co-founder and CEO Hriday Kemburu. “We created Coronavirus Alerts for Cities because there is currently no other way to get verified, local, real-time alerts about the Coronavirus. In this unprecedented and challenging time, it’s more important than ever to give people access to reliable, local information they can trust.”
Students, law officials, college administrators and local newspapers have been using Wildfire to share information within college communities and in some cases are breaking news on the app itself. U.C. Davis’s official communications department broke news on how the Coronavirus was impacting their spring quarter to over 16,000 students using Wildfire among other social and email platforms.
“Wildfire has become a place where our students share information at a rapid pace, especially about COVID-19,” says Sallie Poggi, Director of Social Media at University of California, Davis. “We knew we couldn’t ignore the power of the platform. We have used Wildfire to ensure our community gets the official information from the university in a timely manner. By participating, it has helped us mitigate misinformation and speculation, and lets our students know we are listening to their concerns.”
Additionally, people concerned about Coronavirus in their own communities can post and learn about the latest developments on things like school closures, confirmed COVID-19 cases nearby, and whether their local grocery store has been recently restocked. If your city issues updates with shelter-in-place orders, local playgrounds and picnic areas closings, or there are announcements about community collections for n-95 masks, Wildfire will let you know based on your current location.
To get Coronavirus Alerts for your city you can download Wildfire on iPhone and Android. Search for “Wildfire” on the App Store or Google Play to download the app.
About Wildfire: Currently used by over 300,000 people in over 200 cities, Wildfire was founded in 2015 to keep communities informed of important events happening nearby and make it easy to spread the word quickly when something significant happens. Wildfire is available on iPhone and Android. Search for “Wildfire” on the App Store or Google Play to download the app.
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