Paulette Lifton woke up on her 67th birthday Tuesday morning in a panic to smoke outside her home in the Granada Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. The first person to call was Annette’s sister.
“What’s going on?” asked Mrs. Lifton.
“You need to download the Watch Duty app,” her sister replied.
Ms. Lifton did just that, tracking the fire’s spread via the app’s map and updates as she packed her car with her most prized possession — her favorite sequined jacket. her dogs, King Charles Spaniels, Elle and Sansa; both Emmys won as a TV and film sound editor.
For Ms. Lifton and thousands of other Los Angeles residents, Watch Duty has become a lifesaver in tracking the multiple fires burning around the city. In a county of nearly 10 million people, news of the app has spread through word of mouth and online community groups.
The app sometimes provides faster and more reliable updates than the city’s mobile notification system.
On Thursday night, Los Angeles County’s fire alarm system issued an erroneous evacuation notice to all residents in its jurisdiction, instead of just those near the West Hills neighborhood threatened by the Kenneth Fire.
Officials said Saturday that some county residents were receiving out-of-date alerts after cellphone towers that had been taken offline during the wildfires came back online. Watch Duty, which remained among the most downloaded free apps in the Apple App Store, didn’t have these problems.
The app, founded in 2021, 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 company with a team of 200 volunteers and 15 full-time employees, including retired firefighters and dispatchers. This team listens to radio broadcasts from emergency responders and streams live updates to the app, which maps fires and delineates evacuation zones.
PJ Marino, a 52-year-old actor who lives in the city’s Van Nuys neighborhood, downloaded Watch Duty on Tuesday night and soon his phone was buzzing with a barrage of notifications. He found himself waking up in the middle of the night to check it out and has since made several social media posts urging his neighbors to take it down.
“It’s sickening and I hate having to use it,” said Mr. Marino. “But it is 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 and her family were at.
He said it was “absolutely” a better tool for tracking fires than official alerts from the government, then added that the app can be chaotic. She had to turn off her notifications to sleep at night.
Mr. Mills, a businessman who lives in Sonoma County, Northern California, said he has had to evacuate from wildfires three times in his life. He said he built Watch Duty because the government had never provided anything with the same utility.
The app collects very little personal data from users, he said, adding that he runs it through a nonprofit organization because he has no intention of selling it.
“This is my life and my community,” he said. “I owe it to my community not to be a capitalist of destruction.”
Watch Duty is funded mostly by donations and has grown in recent years as wildfires on the West Coast have become more frequent and intense. The app currently provides coverage in 22 states west of the Mississippi River, excluding Alaska or Louisiana.
Mr. Mills said he’s not worried about the app’s network being able to support the influx of users because he has enough volunteers and employees to staff the service around the clock.
“When things go sideways, that’s why we’re here,” said Mr. Mills. “And we’re nowhere near the end.”
