How Watch Duty became essential in tracking wildfires in Los Angeles

If you live in Los Angeles, you’re probably familiar with Watch Duty, a free app that shows active fires, mandatory evacuation zones, air quality index, wind direction, and a lot of other information that everyone, from firefighters to ordinary people, needs. , has relied on this week’s historic and devastating wildfires. Watch Duty is unique in the tech world because it doesn’t care about user engagement, time spent, or ad sales. The 501(c)(3) non-profit behind it only cares about the accuracy of the information provided and the speed with which the service can deliver the information. The app itself has taken off, rocketing to the top of the Apple and Google app stores. More than 1 million people have downloaded it in the past few days. The elegance of the app lies in its simplicity. It does not scrape user data, show ads, require any kind of login, or track your information. A simple technology stack and UI – most of which are maintained by volunteer engineers and journalists – may help save countless lives. While Watch Duty is free to use, the app accepts tax-deductible donations and offers two membership levels that unlock additional features, such as a firefighter flight tracker and the ability to set alerts for more than four counties. With plans to expand its service across the United States, as well as overseas and into other emergency services, Watch Duty could eventually replace some of the slower and less reliable local government alert systems for millions of people. Photo by Lokman Vural Elibol / Anadolu via Getty Images The app was born from the idea for Watch Duty came to founder John Mills when he was trying to protect his Sonoma County home without a network from the Walbridge fire in 2020. He realized that there was no single source for all people’s information needed to protect themselves from the fire, which eventually killed 33 people and destroyed 156 houses. John and his friend David Merritt, who is the co-founder and CTO of Watch Duty, decided to create an app to help. . “We built the app in 60 days, and it was run completely by volunteers, not full-time staff. This is a side project for many engineers, so the goal is to keep it as simple as possible. verified pages show relevant updates. But increasingly, social media platforms providing automated access to alert services behind paywalls. The government also used multiple alert systems, causing delays that could have cost lives, especially in the Palisades and Eaton fires that resulted in the evacuation of more than 180,000 people sometimes, these government-run signs are sent out in error, causing mass confusion. Watch Duty simplifies everything for millions of people. “We see what we do as a public service,” Merritt said people, i.e. timely, safety-relevant information during an emergency. Now, it is very widespread. Even the agencies themselves, with the best intentions, have their hands tied by bureaucracy or contracts. We partner with government resources with a focus on firefighting.” “We see what we do as a public service.” in minutes. For example, winds that caused the Palisades fire to spread to more than 10,000 acres reached 90 miles per hour on Tuesday. When minutes Importantly, the piecemeal alert system replaced by Watch Duty can cause delays that cost lives. Merritt. “We took the push notification out in less than a minute. Currently, 1.5 million people in LA get push notifications through the app. That’s a lot of messages to send in 60 seconds. Generally, people get everything at the same time. Merritt said Watch Duty relies on several corporate partners with whom it has relationships and contracts to provide its services. “We’re getting push notifications out in under a minute.” The app is built on a mix of technologies, including Google’s cloud platform, Amazon Web Services, Firebase, Fastly, and Heroku. Merritt said the app uses some AI, but only to guide internal alerts and emails. Reporters on Watch Duty — who listen to scanners and update the app with push notifications about everything from air drops to evacuation updates — are mostly volunteers who coordinate coverage via Slack. “All information is investigated for quality rather than quantity,” he said. “We have a code of ethics for journalists. For example, we never report injuries or give specific addresses. Everything is adjusted to certain criteria. We do not make editorials. We report what we have heard on the scanner. According to Merritt, the app has 100 percent uptime. Although it started with volunteer engineers, the nonprofit is slowly adding more full-time people. because of the stricter process,” he said. He said that there are no plans to fill the application or scrape user data. The approach is the Field of Dreams method of building free applications that save people’s lives: if you build well, funding will come. ” That’s the antithesis of what a lot of technology does,” Merritt said. “We don’t want you to spend time in apps. You get the information and get out. We have the option to add more photos, but we are limiting photos that give a different view of the fire we have tracked. We don’t want people rolling doom. Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images Information gathering in the era of TrumpWatch Duty relies heavily on publicly available information from places like the National Weather Service and the Environmental Protection Agency. If the incoming Trump administration decides to follow through on threats to dismantle and disband the EPA (which oversees air quality) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency for the National Weather Service, the move will affect Watch Duty’s ability to operate. Even still, Merritt is optimistic. “We’re going to be pretty insulated from changes to policy,” he said. “We’ve bought the information ourselves or we’re happy to buy it, and we’ll take the cost. The fact that we’re going to cover the entire US will pay for any costs that change from a policy perspective. Our operating costs are mostly salaries. We try to hire very good engineers and have a solid platform. If we need to raise funds to buy data from the National Weather Service, it will be done. The app now covers 22 countries and plans to launch it nationwide. “We got 1.4 million app downloads in the last few days,” he said Merritt. “I’ve only received 60 support tickets, so that shows someone is working there. We really only focus on the delivery of this information.

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