Wildland fire operations

Know where every unit is. Before the chief asks.

DripTorch gives wildland fire crews and incident commanders a shared operational picture during active assignments — live tracking, on-incident operations, and logging in one app.

Start free Sign in

Free for volunteer departments — up to 20 members and 200 incidents per year. Grow with us when you scale. iOS & Android — installs to your phone, no app store hunt Works offline

See it in action

A live operational picture.

The same incident map a chief sees, running the same code as the app — synthetic snapshot of the 2017 Rice Ridge Fire near Seeley Lake, MT. 250 ground resources across 5 operational divisions, air operations (tankers, helicopters, lead planes) circling overhead, dozers cutting line, point-protection on backcountry cabins, with breadcrumb trails and lookout coverage cones.

Sign up to use
What it does

Three jobs, one screen.

Designed for the conditions and chain-of-command of wildland fire response. No glove-defeating taps; no syncing surprises mid-assignment.

Live unit tracking

Crews share location only on shift. Off-shift toggle disables location entirely. Low battery usage — runs in the background without draining your phone.

On-incident operations

Connected to your Active911 dispatch — En route, On scene, Cleared status flows to the chief in seconds. Firefighters tap a need (water, backup, fuel) — no double-entry, no tab-switching.

Operational logging

Every assignment, status change, and arrival is timestamped and logged. After-action reports build themselves — one click on the IC Reporting tab exports a structured AAR archive for the agency record.

Voice messages

Push-to-talk to the thread when typing isn't an option. Capped at 30 seconds — it's a radio, not a podcast. Plays back inline with a waveform scrubber.

Targeted broadcasts

Pick who hears it: everyone, the IC, command staff, your chain of command, or one named recipient. Color-coded pills so a glance at a message tells you who it was for.

Slide-to-evacuate

Incident-wide bug-out broadcast is gated by a slide-unlock + 5-second press-and-hold. A panicked tap on a sun-baked screen can't trigger it. Firefighters get their own "I am evacuating" path with the same gate.

Beacon health pill

Every device shows live upload status — saved, stale, or offline — so the chief knows whose location is fresh and whose phone went dark. No more guessing whether a unit is in a dead zone or out of fuel.

Map annotations

Waypoints, lines, and polygons drawn on the live map and shared at your chosen scope (private, command, incident-wide). Hazards, drop points, and route overlays for the whole crew in seconds.

One-click AAR export

Close an incident and the Reporting tab has a downloadable archive ready — assignments, positions, annotations, message thread, status timeline. Hand it to your AHJ or NWCG record without a spreadsheet pass.

Field-first design

Made for dirty hands and bright sun.

Designed for the line, not the office. Every button sized for gloved hands. Every screen tested in midday sun.

  • Big buttons — sized for gloved hands. No fat-finger mistakes.
  • Easy to read — in bright sun, smoke, and at night.
  • Works without an internet connection — updates send when you're back in service.
  • Connected to your Active911 dispatch — En route, On scene, Cleared status flows to the chief in seconds. Firefighters tap a need (water, backup, fuel) — no double-entry, no tab-switching.
Why we built this

To save firefighter lives.

Communication failures are the most common thread in wildland firefighter deaths. DripTorch was built to close that gap.

Off-grid by design. Engines run on Starlink Mini. Phones stay connected via T-Mobile T-Satellite — no inReach, no second device.

An addition to your operations and incident command — not a replacement for 911.

Who built this

A volunteer firefighter with the engineering toolkit to fix this.

The founder has been a volunteer wildland firefighter for the last three years. His background — cybersecurity, cloud engineering, secure network implementation, secure communications, and privacy & compliance — gave him the foundation to build the technology necessary to solve the problem no one else would.

Talk to us →

Take control of your incident.

Sign up now for free. In seconds. Just takes a phone number or an email.

Start free Book a walk-through