How we handle incident status
What Reported, Active, Contained, Under control and Cleared mean here.
An incident is not a story. A story is finished when it is published; an incident keeps moving, and a page still reading ACTIVE for something cleared two hours ago is wrong in a way that wastes your attention mid-shift.
So every incident carries a status, the time that status was set, and the agency that confirmed it. Each status has its own window of trust: Reported is worth little after twenty minutes, because by then an agency has either confirmed it or it probably was not real. Cleared holds for a day.
Past its window, the page says so in plain words rather than quietly continuing to look current. "Status last confirmed 95 minutes ago and may have changed" is less satisfying than a clean label, and considerably more honest.
Reported means initial reports only, not confirmed by an agency. Active means confirmed and ongoing. Contained means a perimeter is established and work continues. Under control means no further spread is expected. Cleared means units are released.