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How Watch Duty’s wildfire tracking app became a crucial lifeline for LA
“We view what we are doing as a public service,” says the app’s cofounder.
If you live in Los Angeles, you are probably already intimately familiar with Watch Duty, the free app that shows active fires, mandatory evacuation zones, air quality indexes, wind direction, and a wealth of other information that everyone, from firefighters to regular people, have come to rely on during this week’s historic and devastating wildfires. While Watch Duty is free to use, the app accepts tax-deductible donations and offers two tiers of membership that unlock additional features, like a firefighting flight tracker and the ability to set alerts for more than four counties. The app is built on a mix of technology, including Google’s cloud platform, Amazon Web Services, Firebase, Fastly, and Heroku.
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