Internet and phone outages come from three places. First, live monitoring of our own network sites around California — a site only counts as down after its connection fails two checks in a row, roughly two minutes, so one dropped ping never raises a false alarm. Each internet line is watched separately, so a site that fails over from cable to Starlink still shows the cable line as out. Second, reports people submit on this page. Third, what the carriers themselves file with the state (Cal OES / NGA911).

Degraded means a line never actually dropped, but was running slow or losing traffic. A site that just came back stays on the map, faded, for a few hours — otherwise short outages would vanish before anyone saw them.

Power outages come straight from the utilities: PG&E and the statewide Cal OES roll-up, including how many customers are affected and whether the work was planned. When an internet outage lines up in both time and place with a power outage, it gets labelled power-related. When the grid looks fine, that points at the carrier instead.

Wildfires are live CAL FIRE and NIFC incidents, drawn bigger for larger fires and fading as containment climbs. Weather alerts are active National Weather Service warnings. Earthquakes are USGS events of magnitude 2.5 and up from the past 24 hours, sized by magnitude.

One thing worth knowing: everything here is a best-effort snapshot taken when the page loaded, from sources that each update on their own schedule. It's good for getting your bearings. It is not good enough for a decision that affects someone's safety — for that, check with the agency directly.