As fires continue to rage in Southern California, causing more than 100,000 people to flee their homes, a Bay Area app has become the go-to provider of real-time information and a voice against a wave of MAGA-led misinformation.
Watch Duty, created by Santa Rosa-based nonprofit Sherwood Forestry Service, tracks fire risk and firefighting efforts in real time and as of Wednesday morning had overtaken ChatGPT as the top free app in Apple’s App Store.
The app clocked in 7.2 million yearly active users at the end of 2024 and has added 1.4 million since the fires began spreading across the Los Angeles area Tuesday, CEO John Mills told The Standard.
“Techies are obsessed with going to Mars and inventing an AGI robot to do art,” Mills said. “But I’m obsessed with time and life.”
Watch Duty launched three years ago and is a nonprofit with 15 employees and around 200 volunteers. It has rapidly become a go-to tool for residents, firefighters, city officials, and journalists. Southern California residents have taken to social media to praise the app for its timely alerts and the ability to monitor their homes and neighborhoods from afar.
Monitoring our LA home from across the country using Watch Duty.
— Ryan Hoover (@rrhoover) January 9, 2025
So far it's safe, but the Sunset fire introduced a wave of anxiety.
This is heartbreaking for so many. 💔 pic.twitter.com/l79tDxm9mW
Watch Duty logged more than 9,000 wildfires in 22 states in 2024 and relies on active and retired firefighters, dispatchers, and first responders who volunteer to track radio reports, analyze data from the National Weather Service, and vet information from other sources before sending out notifications to users at risk.
Mills said the app’s volunteers are sleeping in shifts, with one logging in from Australia, in order to continuously monitor the Los Angeles fires.
Mills created the app when he moved to a sprawling ranch in fire-prone Sonoma County after 16 years in San Francisco. In 2020, his neighbor’s ranch caught fire, and Mills failed to receive warning. He decided to use his training as a software engineer to build a “megaphone” app to collect, verify, and amplify fire information. Before that, many in fire zones had no option but to rely on unverified and sometimes incorrect information on social media.
“I had to convince these country folk that I’m not a Silicon Valley tech bro here to take advantage of their community and not be a part of it,” Mills said of recruiting volunteers, adding that he formed the company as a nonprofit to build an app “that is not about money but about life and safety.”
In line with its mission of broadcasting accurate and potentially lifesaving alerts, Watch Duty has been using its rising profile to fight back against conspiracy theories spreading about the Los Angeles fires.
When Elon Musk reposted to X one of Donald Trump’s Truth Social posts blaming Gov. Gavin “Newscum” for having “no water for fire hydrants, no firefighting planes,” Watch Duty replied: “Sorry to burst your bubble but there aren’t enough men, women, or equipment to deploy enough water to stop wind-driven fires like this.
“Why don’t you take some of that ‘go to mars’ money and actually help rather than Monday morning quarterbacking during a live fire?”
Musk, along with President-elect Trump and a host of right-wing personalities, has laid blame for the fires on wokeism and California’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
“DEI means people DIE,” Musk posted Wednesday. In a now-deleted post, he agreed with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ claim that the fires are part of “a globalist plot to wage economic warfare” and deindustrialize the United States.
When one X user decried what they described as Watch Duty’s foray into politics, the app posted: “We aren’t anything other than a non-profit corporation. We have no political beliefs. We believe in life and safety.”
“What we don’t believe in however, is yelling on Twitter about ‘what should have been done’ while people are running for their lives. Do better.”
Mills notes that this isn’t the first time wildfires have inspired conspiracy theories that proliferate online. “Social media is not the place for disaster information,” he said.
For now, Watch Duty is focused on disseminating accurate information in Southern California. But eventually, Mills said, the app will be “the disaster platform for the world.”
“Whether you’re dealing with a torrential flood or an impending wildfire, you need facts,” he said.