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Show HN: Safe-now.live – Ultra-light emergency info site (<10KB)

submitted by tinuvi+(OP) on 2026-02-03 09:06:04 | 193 points 94 comments
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After reading "During Helene, I Just Wanted a Plain Text Website" on Sparkbox (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46494734) , I built safe-now.live – a text-first emergency info site for USA and Canada. No JavaScript, no images, under 10KB. Pulls live FEMA disasters, NWS alerts, weather, and local resources. This is my first live website ever so looking for critical feedback on the website. Please feel free to look around.

https://safe-now.live


NOTE: showing posts with links only show all posts
8. doodad+9u[view] [source] 2026-02-03 12:47:11
>>tinuvi+(OP)
The about page [0] links to a github repository [1], but it seems to not be uploaded or hidden.

[0]: https://safe-now.live/about

[1]: https://github.com/venkatag/SafeNow

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13. zamada+4G[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-03 14:02:07
>>Comput+Zz
I think they are referring to the occurrence rate of false positives, not that of false negatives. E.g. the page for California lists back through to the Bond Fire, which was contained in 2020. The problem may stem from that the FEMA page lists the incident as a single day https://www.fema.gov/disaster/5385 so this tool doesn't set and end date like it would for https://www.fema.gov/disaster/5382

A similar kind of noise note could probably be made of the "Recent Earthquakes" section. E.g. if you select Indianapolis, IN it includes all the way down to a M2.6 which occurred in NW Tennessee 30 days ago.

21. 1970-0+wO[view] [source] 2026-02-03 14:46:47
>>tinuvi+(OP)
I'm seeing fires from 1999.

https://safe-now.live/c/us/al/

26. _fat_s+GR[view] [source] 2026-02-03 15:01:11
>>tinuvi+(OP)
Others have mentioned this but looks like fires from close to ~20 years ago are still showing up as "active emergencies"[0]. Shows the Nash Ranch fire as an active emergency but it was declared in 2008.

[0]: https://safe-now.live/c/us/co/colorado-springs/

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53. tinuvi+Li1[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-03 16:51:06
>>davedx+l71
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/999-and-112-the-uks-national-eme...

112 is also a national emergency number.

56. ohashi+Ep1[view] [source] 2026-02-03 17:22:11
>>tinuvi+(OP)
I've been working on a similar idea for travelers, https://travelsafetydata.com/

It's pulling the travel advisories from US/CA/UK/IE/AU/NZ and aggregating the results/information to help you understand the risks of different countries. It also pulls from other sources for basic country info/risks (eg. women, lgbtq).

Yours is way lighter weight and focused, very cool!

67. dprice+Q82[view] [source] 2026-02-03 20:21:02
>>tinuvi+(OP)
I like this! I noticed that the weather for some Bay Area counties seem to be getting zeroed out for temperature.

https://safe-now.live/c/us/ca/county/san-mateo/ https://safe-now.live/c/us/ca/county/santa-cruz/

(both say: Weather Now 32°F / 0°C - Sunny )

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74. decept+jM2[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-03 23:48:34
>>davedx+l71
112 and 911 (US) work on almost every mobile phone anywhere in the world. It's part of the GSM/UMTS standard. 999 is supported with either no SIM card or a UK SIM card. See §7.1 here: https://www.ietf.org/lib/dt/documents/LIAISON/file562.pdf

They also don't require a phone to be activated in most countries. I believe there are some exceptions in EU countries, but in the US it just needs to have a working antenna and be in range of a tower.

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75. decept+DQ2[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-04 00:13:02
>>tinuvi+RM1
I can't tell much about your infrastructure, but memcached would probably increase that by several orders of magnitude. The NGINX module is pretty simple: https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_memcached_module.htm...

Cloudflare with Cache-Control headers is even simpler if you're okay with adding Cloudflare as a dependency.

From an ASN lookup, it appears you're hosting on Oracle Cloud, so Cloudflare would also give you free data egress: https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud-infrastructure/why-cdn-client...

Their Always-On feature would also help if Oracle has an outage.

I like the general idea, very lightweight and more likely to remain accessible when an emergency is overloading the mobile networks.

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79. KomoD+mt3[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-04 05:27:59
>>ohashi+Ep1
https://travelsafetydata.com/country/SE

How are these "scams & fraud"?

> Make sure your health insurance plan provides coverage overseas. Most care providers overseas only accept credit card payments. See our webpage for more information on insurance overseas. Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for more information on the type of insurance you should consider before you travel overseas.

> Gas stations in rural areas can be far apart. Some stations are unattended and require a credit card with a chip to purchase fuel.

Same with https://travelsafetydata.com/country/NO

It lists child protection laws as "scams & fraud"

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87. tinuvi+6M3[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-04 08:18:03
>>Lord_Z+pj3
National Weather Service. https://api.weather.gov/alerts/active?point={lat},{lon}

Canada: https://dd.weather.gc.ca/alerts/cap/{province}/atom.xml

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91. ashenk+Un4[view] [source] [discussion] 2026-02-04 13:02:33
>>tinuvi+rM3
I think what he is saying is adding simple svg icons, not images. For instance this one https://www.svgrepo.com/svg/308550/earthquake-damage-earthqu... is 700 bytes, and it can most likely be simplified and compressed. (you can also lazy load them so they don't delay the content)
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