InciWeb Wildfire & Incident Scraper

Scrape InciWeb (inciweb.wildfire.gov) — the official U.S. federal incident information system maintained by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group for wildfires, prescribed burns, and burned-area emergency response. Browse all currently tracked incidents nationwide, filter by state / incident type / containment status, or fetch full incident detail (cause, location, coordinates, containment %, managing unit, contacts) by incident ID, slug, or URL. Fully public data, no auth, no proxy required.

What this actor does

• Two modes: browse (search/filter the live incident list) and byIncidentIds (direct lookup)
• Filters: state / territory, incident type, containment status, free-text name search
• Sortable: by last update, name, type, state, or size
• Rich detail: cause, date of origin, location, decimal-degree coordinates, containment %, fuels involved, significant events, managing unit and agency, incident contacts, overview photo
• Optional enrichment: attach news updates, road/area closures, and/or photo gallery per incident via includeNews / includeClosures / includePhotos
• Empty fields are omitted

Output per incident

• name — incident name (e.g. "Dillon Fire")
• incidentId — InciWeb node ID, incidentSlug — URL slug
• incidentType — Wildfire / Prescribed Fire / Burned Area Emergency Response / etc.
• state
• sizeAcres, sizeUnit (only present if reported unit isn't acres)
• percentContained, containmentStatus — derived: Uncontained / Partially Contained / Fully Contained
• cause, dateOfOrigin, estimatedContainmentDate
• location, latitude, longitude
• incidentCommander, incidentTimeZone, currentAsOf
• fuelsInvolved, significantEvents, overviewSummary
• additionalDetails — any other basic-information/current-situation fields the source publishes (e.g. total personnel, cost-to-date) that don't have a dedicated column
• photoUrl — incident overview photograph
• managingUnitName, managingUnitUrl, managingUnitAddress, agencyName, agencyAbbreviation
• contacts[] (name, email, phone, hours), plus flattened contactName / contactEmail / contactPhone / contactHours for the primary contact
• newsUpdates[] — situation reports / daily updates (title, url, publishedAt, summary), only when includeNews is enabled
• closures[] — road/trail/area closure orders (title, url, publishedAt, summary, orderNumber when published), only when includeClosures is enabled
• photos[] — photo gallery entries (title, imageUrl, imageAlt, publishedAt, caption), only when includePhotos is enabled
• lastUpdatedRelative — e.g. "1 month ago" (browse mode only)
• sourceUrl, recordType: "wildfireIncident", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	browse	browse / byIncidentIds
searchQuery	string	–	Free-text incident-name search (mode=browse)
state	string	–	Restrict to one U.S. state/territory (mode=browse)
incidentType	string	–	Restrict to one incident type (mode=browse)
containmentStatus	string	–	Uncontained / Partially Contained / Fully Contained (mode=browse)
sortBy	string	field_last_209_update	Sort field (mode=browse)
sortOrder	string	desc	asc / desc (mode=browse)
incidentIds	array	–	Incident URLs, slugs, or numeric IDs (mode=byIncidentIds)
maxItems	int	20	Hard cap (1–500)
includeNews	boolean	false	Fetch each incident's news-update feed and attach as newsUpdates (1 extra request/incident)
includeClosures	boolean	false	Fetch each incident's road/area closure orders and attach as closures (1 extra request/incident)
includePhotos	boolean	false	Fetch each incident's photo gallery and attach as photos (1 extra request/incident)

Example: nationwide active wildfires, most recently updated first

{
  "mode": "browse",
  "incidentType": "Wildfire",
  "maxItems": 25
}

Example: uncontained fires in California

{
  "mode": "browse",
  "state": "California",
  "containmentStatus": "Uncontained",
  "maxItems": 25
}

Example: lookup specific incidents

{
  "mode": "byIncidentIds",
  "incidentIds": [
    "casrf-dillon-fire",
    "https://inciweb.wildfire.gov/incident-information/aksws-lime-complex",
    "325729"
  ]
}

Use cases

• Emergency management — monitor active wildfire/incident counts by state in real time
• Insurance & risk analytics — track containment progress and acreage for exposure models
• Journalism — pull current incident details for local reporting
• Research & climate tracking — build historical datasets of incident type, size, and cause
• Logistics & travel — check burned-area/road-closure-adjacent incidents near a region
• Public dashboards — feed a live map or ticker of active U.S. wildfire activity

FAQ

What is InciWeb? InciWeb is the official incident information system used by U.S. federal, state, and local land-management agencies (Forest Service, BLM, National Park Service, Fish & Wildlife, state foresters) to publish public updates on wildfires and other incidents. See inciweb.wildfire.gov.

Does this actor only cover wildfires? No — InciWeb also tracks Prescribed Fires, Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) assessments, and other all-hazard incident types when agencies publish them there.

Why do some incidents have no percentContained or latitude/longitude? Not every incident type reports every field (e.g. prescribed fires and BAER assessments often omit containment %; some incidents don't publish exact coordinates). Only fields the source actually publishes are included.

What is additionalDetails? InciWeb's "Basic Information" and "Current Situation" tables vary in the rows they include per incident (e.g. large wildfires may add "Total Personnel" or "Cost to Date"). Any label InciWeb publishes that doesn't map to a dedicated field is preserved verbatim here so no data is lost.

Is containmentStatus an official InciWeb field? It's derived by this actor from the published "Percent of Perimeter Contained" value (0% = Uncontained, 1-99% = Partially Contained, 100% = Fully Contained) to make filtering easier.

How fresh is the data? InciWeb incident pages are updated by the managing agency's public information team, typically once or more per day for active incidents.

Is this affiliated with InciWeb or the U.S. government? No — this is an independent third-party actor that reads InciWeb's public pages. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by NWCG, USDA, or any federal agency.

Can I look up an incident that's no longer active? InciWeb removes incidents from the active list some time after closeout, so mode=byIncidentIds will only resolve incidents whose pages are still published.

Why might managingUnitUrl occasionally be unreachable? That field links to the managing agency's own website (e.g. fs.usda.gov, blm.gov), which is outside InciWeb and outside this actor's control — some agency sites apply their own regional access restrictions independent of InciWeb.