During the early chaos of the Lee Fire this month, when social media was also burning up, locals wanted information. Where’s the smoke coming from? How far away is the fire? Do I have to evacuate? Where do I take my livestock?
As I was scrambling to get a handle on what was happening, a friend and retired U.S. Forest Service employee sent me the link to an app with fire maps, nationwide. All kinds of real-time information — updates, photos, fire perimeters, evacuation notices, human and animal shelter locations, weather, wind flow, air quality and hotspots — literally at my fingertips and plotted on an interactive map. Welcome to Watch Duty.
Sailors and soldiers understand what it means to be on watch. It’s a 24/7 thing, split into manageable shifts, so someone is awake and aware at all times. While others are sleeping, the person on watch looks out for danger, keeps the boat on course. The Watch Duty app works the same way with a crew of 20 staff and 280 volunteers across the globe, gathering and coordinating information into a hub and making it visible on the map.
“It’s a distillation of all sorts of different things that people would have to have open on their phone, like weather, a flight tracker, air quality — any of those things,” said Sekhar Padmanabhan, a staff reporter living in Los Angeles. “It’s all in one place. We want people to have the information in their pocket.”
That’s pretty much how the app got started. CEO John Clarke Mills, a tech entrepreneur in California, lived through two wildfires in two years. Long story short, frustrated and angry about the lack of timely information during the fires, Clarke took matters into his own hands. He founded Watch Duty in 2021. Three years later, the nonprofit logged 7.2 million active users, up from 1.9 million in 2023. Funding reached $5.6 million last year from memberships, individual donations and grants, including $2 million from Google.
How it works
A typical day at Watch Duty doesn’t involve clocking in at the office or even a central office, for that matter. Employees and volunteers are scattered across the U.S. and across the globe, connected by computers. Cut the telecom lines and it would be a different story.
Adam Johnson, regional captain, is in Fort Collins, Colorado. He started as a volunteer in 2023 because he, too, was frustrated with how difficult it was to find wildfire information.
“I was attempting to do what Watch Duty does in 2012,” he explained. “I was contributing to a Facebook page called ‘Colorado Wildfire Information’ and that was the year the High Park Fire started in Larimer County.” He was working on the West Slope at the time and continued to post about the fire. “I was subscribing to every fire department, Twitter, everything, and I was trying to populate it all into one Facebook page for people.”
Johnson said after he wakes up, he waits for official updates on long-running fires, like the Lee Fire. “We make sure we get the right signals, that no evacuation zones were missed, and then share the information provided by the agencies,” he explained. “Then after those updates are made, we listen and watch for new signals.”
“We take everything in,” added Padmanabhan. “Part of the day we’re listening to radios, checking socials or we’re processing information or watching press conferences or just any number of things to get as much information as we can for people.” They collect info from different agencies, vet it and post it. Watch Duty does not take information from media reports. “We can’t vet it,” Padmanabhan said.
Newbies
During the Lee Fire, the Garfield County Sheriff urged the public to rely on local updates instead of those from other organizations. “It’s a common practice for those types of agencies to be that way when they haven’t [worked with Watch Duty],” said Johnson. “We have a person that can reach out to them and hopefully bridge the gap, but they don’t have that history.” He added that the sheriff’s post was picked up by fire protection agencies all the way to El Paso County.
“As a fire starts, it’s definitely a more local information level from local fire departments,” he added. “They’re the first ones [on the scene].” But, as the fire grows and federal agencies get involved, information is more difficult to come by and the updates slow down.
You can find the app ‘round the clock at watchduty.org. A lot of features are available for free. You can also become a member and agencies can join at the “pro” level.