An app built on an off-the-grid ranch in rural Sonoma County, supported by solar panels, satellite internet service and a small nonprofit team, is serving as a critical tech hub for free, fast and reliable information to help victims of the catastrophic Los Angeles fires — and future disasters.
The fire-tracking app Watch Duty, created among the oaks and redwoods of Healdsburg, has skyrocketed to prominence in the past week with 12.8 million active users, who rely on it for real-time intel on fire perimeters, but also evacuation zones, animal shelters, meal distribution locations, weather reports and other essential information for those affected by the raging Los Angeles fires.
“We decided to take a human-centered approach to the information problem,” said Watch Duty CEO and co-founder John Mills, 42, his voice frayed by fatigue. While governments release important facts during a crisis, “no one was really thinking about user experience.”
Watch Duty has soared to the number six spot in Apple’s App Store listing, just below ChatGPT and ahead of Threads, Google, Instagram, Bluesky and TikTok. It’s supported by donations, grants and $25 annual membership dues for users who seek extra features, such as flight tracking.
“It’s bittersweet,” said Mills. “I’m really proud that we get to do this…but so many people shouldn’t have died.” The number of deaths from both fires is 25 — 16 from Eaton and nine from Palisades — but officials warned the death toll is likely to keep rising. There are also 37 missing person reports, according to officials.
With almost no capital and reliant on gifts of time, energy and services, in 2021 Mills wrote most of Watch Duty’s computer code — in only 80 days. It’s built on a mix of technology, mostly Heroku and Amazon Web Services. “I stayed up, day and night, for a very long time, to get it out the door for the fire season,” he recalls.
Now it has 15 full-time staff, including engineers from Google, Apple and Facebook, who are making constant adjustments to the database and cache infrastructure to handle the sudden influx of users. Its reporters and scanners are first responders, retired firefighters,and dispatchers. It also relies on about 200 trained volunteers. Its advisors include Andy Abranches of PG&E and Orange County fire chief Brian Fennessy.
Watch Duty was born of Mills’ own frustrations.
After years of living in San Francisco, where he founded Zenput, a software company that helps restaurants with inventory, food prep estimates and sales forecasting, in 2020 he moved to a 170-acre ranch in the rolling hills of Sonoma County.
“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.”
He loves the ranch’s self-sufficiency. The son of an IBM executive, he began writing computer code at age eight, because his parents wouldn’t let him near a table saw. Over time, he mastered welding, plumbing and woodworking. He solved electrical problems. He built and restored cars.
“I like to remind people that ‘engineer’ means ‘engine,’ ” he said. One of his first projects at his new Sonoma home was converting an old yellow 1988 Crown Coach school bus, once used by the Merced School District, into a Burning Man-inspired “Disorient Express.” He installed solar panels. Starlink provides high-speed internet.
It’s here where he founded his nonprofit Sherwood Forestry Service, named for the home of Robin Hood, the legendary English folk hero who stole from the rich and gave to the poor.
“It was founded with the belief that, given the right environment and leadership, with no money changing hands, we can take idle human potential and make it kinetic,” said Mills.
But his new home was dangerously fire-prone.
In a 2019 incident, he saw planes and helicopters flying over his home, not realizing that a neighbor’s ranch was on fire. In 2020, as the Walbridge Fire edged closer to his property, he scoured the Internet for useful information.
“You end up sitting with 15 browser tabs open, constantly refreshing” the computer screen to update content, he said. “You’re checking CalFire, Windy, Flight Radar, Plume Mapper and whomever.”
“It’s just a nightmare,” he said. “You get no information, or the wrong information, late information or partial information. They send you an alert to evacuate — but if you haven’t been digging through the Internet, you don’t know: ‘When I leave my driveway, do I turn east or west?’ “
Watch Duty is the nonprofit’s first large-scale project, started with $1 million of Mills’ own money. “I built Watch Duty to help myself survive out here in the woods,” he said.
It initially served only Sonoma, Lake and Napa counties. Now it covers 22 states across the western and central U.S.
On one site, it combines publicly available maps of fires, evacuation orders and warnings — similar to what Cal Fire provides — with other useful information from many sources. Users have the option to turn notifications on or off.
A notification starts when Watch Duty’s automated monitoring system hears a 911 dispatch. This triggers the team through the internal messaging tool Slack. Then reporters in that region start monitoring their radio scanners, wildfire cameras, satellites and other public sources, such as official announcements from law and fire officials. A Watch Duty team vets the information and waits for on-scene personnel to give an official report on conditions.
If the fire poses a threat, Watch Duty issues a notification. The company says its reporters follow a strict code of conduct when notifying the public. The incident is monitored until the fire is extinguished or no longer a threat.
“I almost guarantee you Watch Duty can provide you notification prior to government,” said Sonoma County fire chief Marshall Turbeville, in a testimonial. That’s because it takes 1 to 15 minutes for a fire report to travel from the officer to the dispatcher and then be released to the public.
It takes the pressure off dispatch centers, said Healdsburg’s retired fire marshall Linda Collister, “because people aren’t calling 911 for everything that they need.”
Watch Duty can also offer reassurance. For instance, it identifies plumes of worrisome smoke that are merely a controlled burn.
It doesn’t take advertising. It doesn’t sell users’ personal information. It doesn’t care about user engagement, time spent or other conventional tech metrics.
In the future, it plans to use other types of data, such as river gauges and tsunami buoys, to monitor flood risks.
Watch Duty’s success is heartwrenching, said Mills. “This is our future in the West. I know that my forest will be overrun again with fire, and I’ll be in it.”
“If we don’t make drastic changes,” he said, “Watch Duty will continue to top the App Store charts every summer. That’s a victory for no one.”