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When Fires Rage, Millions Turn to Watch Duty. Meet the Guy Who Made It
Watch Duty proved indispensable during the recent LA wildfires. John Mills, the app’s creator, wants it to be the one place to go for tracking disasters. He just needs all the data to do it.
It was half past 10 on the morning of January 7, 2025, and Mills—slim, profane, voice charred by years of smoking—was talking up his free fire-tracking app, Watch Duty, to a coworker and one of his nonprofit’s investors. At 10:33 am, he posted it to the app with an anodyne caption: “Resources are responding to a reported vegetation fire with smoke visible on the Temescal Canyon camera.” Twenty minutes later, the incident had a name. Marty Walters, a volunteer who started monitoring wildfire scanners for Watch Duty in California’s Plumas and other surrounding rural counties in 2023, is proud of the work everyone on the team did during the LA fires.
Or read this on Wired
