About Big Bear News

Big Bear News gathers what happened in the valley today from more than 40 scattered public sources — government agendas, dispatch logs, weather and road feeds, event calendars, and local newsrooms — and writes it up plainly, with every claim linked to where it came from. The goal is simple: one calm morning read instead of checking six websites and a Facebook group.

It was started by Andrew Sauer, who lives in the valley and wanted local news that was sourced, current, and quiet — no rumor, no clickbait, no ads.

We are honest about how these stories are made, because trust is the whole point.

• Stories are written by AI from cited public sources. Nothing is invented — every factual claim traces back to a document, feed, or page we monitor.
• An AI editor reviews every story before it publishes, checking that each claim is supported by its source.
• Some stories are additionally reviewed by a named person. When that happens, the story says so and names the reviewer.
• Every claim links its source. You can open the original document and check it yourself.
• When we get something wrong, we correct it promptly and publish the correction at /corrections.

Each story carries a short disclosure note saying whether it was AI-written and edited or additionally reviewed by a named person — so you always know what you are reading.

We watch 35 public sources across the valley. Here is the current list, grouped by what they cover. Paused feeds are left off until they are working again.

Government

Agendas, minutes, and meeting notices from the valley's public agencies.

• Big Bear City CSD
• Big Bear Lake City Council
• Big Bear Lake Planning Commission
• Big Bear Area Regional Wastewater Agency
• Big Bear Lake Department of Water and Power
• Big Bear Municipal Water District
• Big Bear Fire Department Board of Directors

Public safety

Dispatch calls, wildfire incidents, and emergency alerts.

• Big Bear Lake Fire Department dispatch
• San Bernardino County Sheriff media summary
• NWS weather alerts
• CalFire incidents
• National wildfire incident feed (NIFC)
• Mountain Rim Fire Safe Council curbside chipping

Conditions

Weather, air quality, roads, lake level, and daylight — refreshed through the day.

• National Weather Service forecast
• National Weather Service observations (Big Bear Airport)
• Google Weather
• Google Air Quality
• AirNow (ZIP 92315)
• Google travel times (off-mountain routes)
• Caltrans District 8 chain controls
• Big Bear Municipal Water District lake level
• Ben's Weather
• Sunrise and sunset times

Events

Calendars from the city, the chamber, tourism sites, and local venues.

• City of Big Bear Lake calendar
• Big Bear Chamber upcoming events
• BigBear.com (Visit Big Bear) events
• Destination Big Bear events
• Village Theaters showtimes

Community

Local newsrooms, the hospital, and nonprofits that serve the valley.

• KBHR News
• Big Bear Grizzly
• Mountains Community Hospital
• Southern California Mountains Foundation
• Victorville Daily Press (Big Bear coverage)

Schools

Bear Valley Unified School District. School-board coverage is limited right now — the district's agenda feed is paused while we fix how it's published.

• Bear Valley Unified School District

Recreation

Trail, campground, and forest status for the San Bernardino National Forest.

• U.S. Forest Service recreation status

Beyond these fixed feeds, we use the Brave Search API to surface Big Bear stories from outlets we don't monitor directly. Web discovery is powered by Brave Search.

Some things are not ours to publish, and we hold that line on purpose. From public-safety dispatch feeds we follow a strict policy:

• No medical calls. Health and welfare calls are private and stay unpublished.
• No names of suspects or people involved. We never carry a person's name from a dispatch log.
• Block-level locations only. We say the block and town, never a house number or exact address.
• An explicit allowlist. Only traffic collisions and fires are eligible to appear. Any call type we don't recognize stays private by default.

We publish corrections promptly and in the open. When a story is wrong or incomplete, we fix it, note what changed and why, and keep a permanent record at /corrections. If you spot something that needs correcting, email us — we want to know.

We keep tracking to the minimum and turn nothing on unless you opt in: anonymous analytics run only after you accept them in the consent banner (and never when your browser sends Global Privacy Control), your newsletter email is used only to send the newsletter, and we never sell your data.

The full details — what we collect, the vendors we use, and your California privacy rights — are in our privacy policy.

Questions, corrections, or a tip? Email hello@bigbear.news. We read everything.

Curious about our crawler? See our crawler.