UC Berkeley Has New Safety App Called Wildfire

Hot off the presses is a brand new phone app aimed at keeping UC students safe.

The app is called Wildfire and was created by a quartet of UC Berkeley students. The premise is deceptively simple and is based on a crowdsourcing formula, with students and members of the community texting at-the-moment issues involving safety, traffic, protests, injuries, crime and similar events. Texts are monitored by public safety officials, adding another layer of protection. I’ve played around with it over the last week and really like it. In fact, I like it more than a couple of the other safety apps I’ve explored.

The founders, all UCB seniors, are:

• Hriday Kemburu (CEO) – Computer Science
• Vinay Ramesh – Political Science
• Tim Hyon – Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Jay Patel – Computer Science

Currently, the app is only available at UC Berkeley but there are plans to get it up and running at other UCs within the year.

Wildfire sends you text alerts, and within the app you have access to a list of all incidents as well as an incident map.

It also has two other convenient features — a personal emergency contact list and a resource list with pre-plugged quick access to the police, hospital, fire and other community numbers.

You can find Wildfire at the Apple app store or on Android.