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For people who live in areas threatened by wildfire, it can be a challenge to try to stay alert with the latest information. There are county and state and federal agency websites to check, sheriff's alerts by text and email and then livestream press conferences. NPR's Liz Baker reports, there's an app for that now, and it's growing in popularity.
LIZ BAKER, BYLINE: For days in early September, towering pyrocumulonimbus clouds loomed over four Southern California counties. Millions of people could look up at the sky and know fires were raging nearby, or they could look down at their phones.
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MIKE DIGIOVANNI: Got the alert on Watch Duty when the evacuation order was given.
BAKER: Mike DiGiovanni and his wife were at their cafe in Running Springs, a small town in the mountains above San Bernardino, when the Line Fire took off in their direction.
DIGIOVANNI: One of our best customers is a San Bernardino County firefighter, and he advised us to download Watch Duty. He said it's the most accurate and what the firefighters use.
BAKER: Watch Duty is a free app which gathers a wide range of information about active wildfires - acres burned, evacuation orders, shelter locations. It makes it easy for civilians to access and understand. The week that DiGiovanni downloaded Watch Duty, it was one of the most downloaded free apps in the U.S., according to data from the tracking website Sensor Tower.
JOHN MILLS: So that's the sad part, is it means that things are getting extraordinarily bad when this happens.
BAKER: Watch Duty co-founder and CEO John Mills wishes his app weren't necessary.
MILLS: We built an application that we don't want you to have to use.
BAKER: As a Silicon Valley tech guy living off the grid in what he calls the middle of nowhere, Sonoma County, Mills experienced the Walbridge Fire firsthand in 2020, which inspired him to build the app fast.
MILLS: Hey, I live in the woods. People are going to die. This has to get launched tomorrow, right? So we built Watch Duty in 80 days and got it live, and we had 50,000 users in a week.
BAKER: Mills recruited volunteers and staff reporters, mostly former firefighters, radio scanners and journalists. They gather and interpret information from official sources, wilderness live cams and radio chatter from first responders. Then they publish it to the app.
MILLS: This is a real-time operation, 24 hours a day. Like, we talk to you through an app. But really, we listen to radios - right? - 100-year-old technology.
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UNIDENTIFIED FIREFIGHTER: I got one of the units in section 9 by one of the handline is.
MILLS: And that's really where you find out the most up-to-date, real-time intelligence, 'cause it actually is the firefighters doing that job at that moment.
KAREN HANCOCK: Watch Duty has definitely filled a gap.
BAKER: Karen Hancock is the public information officer for the Sonoma County Fire District, which deals with wildfires and other emergencies. Her job is to communicate with the public, so they know what's going on.
HANCOCK: But a lot of times, you know, we're out in the field, and we just can't get it out fast enough because our hands are so busy in that moment.
BAKER: Hancock says Watch Duty has been a literal lifesaver for her community, which was one of the first tracked by the app, starting in 2021.
HANCOCK: Before, it was difficult to get your information from a lot of different resources. You know, we don't have, like a fire app, you know, for our fire agency. You had to go to the website or social media, or you had to wait until the news picked it up - so a big difference.
BAKER: For the record, not everyone is such a fan. CalFire, California's state wildfire agency, prefers people get information straight from their own website. They told NPR in an emailed statement that there are risks to following unofficial platforms that use unverified sources. For what it's worth, John Mills, the Watch Duty creator, kind of agrees. He still signs up for Nixle Alerts and says app users should do the same. And he says he'd trade Watch Duty's popularity for a summer with no fires any day.
Liz Baker, NPR News, Los Angeles. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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