Paulette Lifton woke up Tuesday morning on her 67th birthday in a panic as smoke billowed in the distance from her home in the Granada Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. The first person he called was his sister Annette.
“What’s going on?” Mrs. Lifton asked.
“You need to download the Watch Duty app,” his sister replied.
Ms. Lifton did just that, tracking the fire’s spread through map and app updates while packing her car with her most prized possessions: her favorite sequin jacket; her dogs, King Charles spaniels, Elle and Sansa; and the two Emmys she won as a television and film sound editor.
For Ms. Lifton and thousands of other Los Angeles residents, Watch Duty has become a lifeline in monitoring the multiple fires burning across the city. In a country of nearly 10 million people, word of the app spread through word of mouth and in online community groups.
The app has at times provided faster and more reliable updates than the city’s flawed mobile notification system.
On Thursday evening, Los Angeles County’s warning system broadcast an incorrect evacuation warning to all residents in its jurisdiction, rather than just those near the West Hills neighborhood threatened by the Kenneth Fire.
Officials said Saturday that some county residents were receiving outdated alerts after cell towers that were knocked offline during the wildfires came back online. Watch Duty, which has remained among the most downloaded free apps in the Apple App Store, had no such problems.
Founded in 2021, the app had 2 million downloads as of Tuesday and 14 million unique users this week, Watch Duty CEO John Mills said in an interview Saturday.
Mr. Mills operates the app through a nonprofit organization with a team of 200 volunteers and 15 full-time employees, including retired firefighters and dispatchers. That team listens to emergency responders’ radio broadcasts and transmits real-time updates to the app, which maps fires and outlines evacuation zones.
PJ Marino, a 52-year-old actor who lives in the Van Nuys neighborhood, downloaded Watch Duty Tuesday night and his phone was soon hit with a barrage of notifications. He found himself waking up in the middle of the night to check on it and has since made several posts on social media urging his neighbors to dump it.
“It’s morbid and I hate having to use it,” Marino said. “But it’s necessary.”
Cara Mia DiMassa said she and her neighbors used the app’s map to track the Eaton Fire, which spared her home but destroyed the Altadena summer camp she owned with her family.
He said it is “absolutely” a better tool for tracking fires than official government warnings, then added that the app can be chaotic. He had to turn off notifications to sleep at night.
Mr. Mills, a business owner who lives in Northern California’s Sonoma County, said he has been forced to flee fires three times in his life. He said he created Watch Duty because the government has never provided something with the same utility.
The app collects very little personal data from users, he said, adding that he runs it through a nonprofit because he has no plans to sell it.
“This is my life and my community,” he said. “I owe it to my community to not be a disaster capitalist.”
Watch Duty is funded primarily by donations and has grown in recent years as wildfires on the West Coast have become more common and intense. The app currently provides coverage in 22 states west of the Mississippi River, excluding Alaska and Louisiana.
Mr Mills said he was not worried about the app’s network being able to support the influx of users because it has enough volunteers and employees to provide 24-hour service.
“When things go bad, that’s what we’re here for,” Mills said. “And we’re no where near the end.”