As fires grew, so did profiles of ‘scanner’ X accounts reporting what they heard
Before the fires they mostly tracked police pursuits and crimes in progress — maybe the occasional building fire.
But over the last week, since major fires began ravaging huge swaths of Los Angeles County, “scanners” on X — accounts who listen obsessively to police and fire radio chatter, then transcribe what they hear into digestible posts — have grown exponentially in popularity.
There are numerous scanner accounts covering Los Angeles — @ScannerPacific, @LAScanner and @LosAngeles_Scan — and each of them has spent the last three days monitoring numerous radios to try to stay abreast of information coming out in real time about the Los Angeles wildfires. Each account has tens of thousands of followers.
“It is almost impossible to stop listening since almost every transmission has important information,” said the man who runs the @ScannerPacific account, who requested anonymity out of safety concerns related to his work.
“It’s tragic to be honest to listen to these fires and to just hear we have a home burning and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said Jack Quillin, 22, who runs @LAScanner. “Several times over the scanner I’ve heard firefighters say, ‘We need more resources,’ and the incident commander says, ‘We don’t have any.’”
Ten confirmed deaths and more than 9,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed and more than 150,000 people remain under mandatory evacuation orders. Law enforcement sources told The Times that it’s likely many of the small fires will turn out to have been the work of arson.
People come to the scanner world differently.
The man behind @ScannerPacific works in the emergency services field and also used to run a similar scanner account during college in the Bay Area, he said. Quillin, meanwhile, is a stringer for news services and often goes to the scenes of breaking news to record video. The person who runs @LosAngeles_Scan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Both men have been working semi-constantly since the fires started, pulling 16- to 20-hour shifts listening to multiple scanners to get people the most up to date info possible. Quillin said he’s been getting two to three hours of sleep each night before getting back on the radios.
Part of the importance of their work is the ability to get info out to the public before authorities can, said the two men.
“If I can alert someone that a fire is approaching them or if a nearby house is being burglarized, they can take action to have a better outcome than if they were unaware. While I can typically post something I hear in less than 15 seconds, official warnings could take minutes,” said @ScannerPacific. “In the case of a fire, that could be the difference between evacuating or getting stuck.”
With the explosion of fires across the L.A. area, tracking app Watch Duty, which has 7.2 million active users annually, told The Times it counted 600,000 new sign-ups in the last 24 hours.
There is still a feeling of powerlessness behind the radios. While they hear everything, there is little they can do other than regurgitate the info online.
Quillin said the worst moment was when he heard a mayday call about a firefighter who had fallen. His fellow fire department colleagues could not find him for 30 minutes because his radio had broken. While the firefighter ended up surviving, Qullin felt helpless.
“My heart dropped,” he said.
What helps him keep going are the messages online from people who tell him his work has helped them navigate difficult situations, or even saved their lives.
“A couple days ago I tweeted out that I felt powerless about these fires. And the outpouring of support I got saying that I saved lives and told people when to get out of their houses and helped them figure out that their houses are still standing, that really helped,” he said.
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