As wildfires continue to devastate communities across Southern California, one service is working overtime to keep residents informed − and safe. Watch Duty uses an app and a web browser to ...

After returning home from a forced evacuation due to the Walbridge Fire in 2020 ... a $2 million grant from Google.org. In ...

Watch Duty, founded in 2021 ... some gleaned from their own internal dispatches, with fire maps, photos, live video from fire lookout cameras, notices of evacuation orders and weather warnings ...

In 2023, Watch Duty secured enough funding to start paying ... noncritical features like custom map tools and fire-fighting plane tracking for up to $99 per year. On Slack, the volunteers set ...

[Screenshot: Watch Duty] The app also shares maps of fires, with the option to turn on a wind layer that shows where the fire is likely to move. The map reveals evacuation zones and roads ...

Last fall, a relatively unknown app called Watch Duty beat out Open ... they don’t always include maps, so people are left to guess the exact location of the fire and the direction it’s ...

“Download Watch Duty” has become ... in their county, see maps of fires and evacuation zones, view information about winds and air quality, view cameras showing fire activity and see updates ...

IT’S CALLED WATCH DUTY AND THE ... THE NAME OF THE FIRE. WE HAVE THE ADDRESS DESCRIPTION AND THEN THE COUNTY. IT’S OCCURRING IN ALL SHARED IN AN INTERACTIVE AND DETAILED MAP.

“The majority of fatalities occur within the first hours of a fire, meaning every second counts,” said John Mills, co-founder and CEO at Watch Duty, in a statement. “We built Watch Duty to ...

Watch Duty was created in 2021 by a California resident who experienced the stress of wildfire evacuations firsthand. The app provides users with real-time fire perimeters, evacuation orders ...