With many event sharpening around us, a mountain of notifications come across various mediums and reach people. Apart from social media apps, such notifications come in text messages, texting apps and other apps. But they often come in quite late.

In terms of the novel coronavirus pandemic, every country around the world has been affected in one way or another. The app ‘Wildfire’ is among those apps that is helping people access critical information in order to protect themselves against the virus. A lot of students and employees of educational institutions have made full use of the Wildfire app.

As of now, information about new local cases of the coronavirus, closures and other cancellations is thankfully present on Wildfire. Each of this is verified as well. This is among the many noble purposes of Wildfire. It helps users stay informed of the latest happenings around them.

How does Wildfire verify coronavirus updates

The app has a new tab labeled ‘coronavirus.’

This contains news about it in the area which is reliable and verified. This tab contains only news and alerts about the coronavirus. These alerts are verified in the users’ respective local areas.

News related to these alerts come from and are also referenced from verified news sources and institutes. Among them are the World Health Organization (W.H.O) and the Center for Disease Control (C.D.C).

Wildfire – What kind of app is it?

Wildfire is a mobile app keeping users informed about important events that are taking place near them. Its main purpose is to spread the word of any event happening nearby.

Currently, the app is present in more than 200 colleges and universities globally with more than 350,000 and growing base of users.

How does it work?

Wildfire is a mobile app where important and trending posts are sent out as alerts to users nearby. Some real-life examples are as under:

• When it comes to safety. Wildfire alerted 4,000 students of the University of California-Berkeley within a 1-mile radius of a shooting, a minute after it took place.
• In terms of celebrities spotted. Around 11,000 students quickly found out that Kevin Durant of the Golden State Warriors was in UCLA.
• In 2018, Classes at UC Davis were cancelled when students used the Wildfire app to spread a petition about the quality of air during the California wildfires of 2018.

When did its development begin?

The idea originated when one of its founders was nearly mugged outside the library of University of California – Berkeley in 2015. He eventually made a post about it on Facebook about it to warn students of the incident.

It did get hundreds of views but realized later that most of these students at UC Berkeley were neither friends with him on social media nor were scrolling through their Facebook feed at that time. A lot of them were just plain strangers to him.

Upon observing the clear lack of an effective way of spreading real-time updates within the local community. The founders then decided to create an app that could capitalize on that by eliminating the limits existing social media networks have today.

The creators of Wildfire made it as creative as they can. The app is an effective way for people to communicate with other people and deliver real time notification to them.

Who are Wildfire’s creators and why did they name it that way?

Wildfire was created by a team graduates of University of California – Berkeley, namely Hriday Kemburu, Tim Hyon, Jay Patel and Vinay Ramesh. They are based in California. They named the app Wildfire so it can spread news and notifications real fast.

Wildfire is available on both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store respectively. All they need to do is search for ‘Wildfire’ on either of them to download the app.

What kind of people use Wildfire?

Local newspapers, officers of the law, high school students, University students and other young adults are using wildfire in obtaining and sharing information.

How can official accounts be verified?

If any journalist, law enforcement official, or any other person needs to get a Wildfire account verified, then they can contact the company at with the needed information. The company will then help verify Wildfire profiles needing verification.