The nonprofit started in 2021 with a focus on California’s wildfires.
The app has since expanded to the entire US, where it uses a combination of paid employee “reporters” and many more volunteers who monitor emergency responder radio channels and translate that information about disaster zones to app users.
Watch Duty became a critical resource during the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles last year, providing real-time information about the fire’s movements that users came to rely on.
In the year since, Watch Duty has capitalized on that increased recognition and brought in thousands of new users and partnerships, including one with Amazon's Ring cameras that lets people share their Ring videos in Watch Duty if a fire is nearby.
Monitoring flooding takes a different approach than tracking wildfires.
