How Watch Duty Adapts to Wildfires in California.
While the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles continue, attention is focused on the app that allows users to track their progress. The founder of Watch Duty, John Mills, shared how the platform has responded to this situation.
Over the past three days, devastating wildfires have impacted Los Angeles and continue to burn actively. The Palisades and Eaton fires have advanced so rapidly that many people have been trapped in their homes or forced to abandon their vehicles and wheelchairs alongside the road to escape the flames. Those waiting to learn the fate of their homes are living in a state of anguish. Many have turned to a fire tracking app called Watch Duty, which has become an essential source of information in these uncertain times.
Watch Duty is an app that tracks wildfires and provides disaster information in near real-time to its users, through maps and notifications about fire perimeters, evacuation zones, and air quality. Its creator, John Clarke Mills, a resident of Northern California, was inspired to develop the app after a fire in 2021 that threatened his home. Frustrated by the lack of timely information regarding the fire’s location and uncertain about whether he should evacuate, Mills channeled his anger and anxiety into a platform designed to help people track the movement of fire near them. Over time, the app has grown to become a critical resource for those in fire-prone areas, now covering 22 states in the western and central U.S.
The magnitude of the fires in Los Angeles, coupled with the significance of the location, has led to an unprecedented surge in users for this platform. In just one night, Watch Duty gained 600,000 new users and became the most downloaded app on the Apple Store, surpassing ChatGPT. Although the app had gained popularity at previous times, it had never experienced growth at this level.
Mills has commented that these fires are something he has never seen before. In a conversation while heading to San Francisco, he spoke about how his small team has managed this overwhelming increase in users, the future projections for the platform, and his thoughts on the influx of experts from the comfort of their homes on social media.
The situation is chaotic, and the Watch Duty team is working intensely to manage the requests. Work shifts have been implemented, and to ensure the service operates effectively, some team members have worked up to 18 hours. Requests can reach up to 30,000 per second, presenting an unprecedented challenge in system management.
Facing such a massive increase in demand has not been easy. Mills confirmed that significant adjustments have had to be made to the hardware and data structure to align the service's capacity with current needs. Despite the pressure, the team has managed to maintain operations in the face of this crisis.
Regarding the official response from emergency agencies to the fires, Mills asserts that they are doing everything they can, acknowledging that confronting a fire of this magnitude, fueled by strong winds, requires extraordinary efforts. He mentions that the public often lacks understanding of the scale of the problem, thinking that water can simply extinguish the fire, but they do not comprehend the nature of such a difficult-to-control blaze.
Mills has also noted the proliferation of opinions on social media regarding the fires, reflecting on how misinformation can complicate the situation. While he has been championing the conversation about the responsible use of information online, he remains steadfast in his approach to work, seeking to provide accurate data rather than getting involved in the tumult of social media.
Looking ahead, as his team continues to address the current crisis, Mills is considering how to expand the app to include information on other natural disasters like hurricanes, democratizing access to critical data in emergency situations. For him, it is essential that Watch Duty becomes a voice of reason in difficult times.
