Fire tracking app used by millions expands to help monitor dangerous floods

When the Eaton Fire threatened his Altadena home in January 2025, Matt Blea and his family faced a crucial decision: evacuate or stay.

A friend advised Blea to download Watch Duty, a free app providing real-time updates on fire perimeters, evacuation orders, and emergency response.

“It influenced me to leave the home sooner than later,” Blea said, a decision that led his family to evacuate that evening before their home was destroyed.

Blea was among over 2.5 million individuals who relied on Watch Duty to monitor fires across Los Angeles County that week. Its critical information is gathered, vetted, and disseminated by approximately two dozen staff and over 100 volunteers. They monitor emergency radio traffic, aircraft reports, and local agency communications, providing accurate, up-to-the-minute data.

The service proved indispensable, according to David Hertz, a Malibu resident and captain of his community’s fire brigade. He highlighted its value in areas with minimal warning during the Eaton and Palisades fires, which claimed 31 lives. Hertz described the app as “a democratization of data that empowers people,” underscoring its role in public safety.

This month, Watch Duty expanded its services to track another deadly climate hazard: flooding. This expansion coincides with peak flash flood season across the U.S., nearly a year after last July’s devastating Texas floods. Those floods killed over 130 and sparked widespread criticism regarding inadequate communication for residents and visitors in the Texas Hill Country.

“This is painful that this keeps happening,” said John Mills, CEO and co-founder of the donor-supported nonprofit behind the app. Mills emphasized the urgent need to disseminate information “fast enough on as many channels as humanly possible,” highlighting the app’s ongoing mission to bridge critical communication gaps during natural disasters.

Mills built the app after his own close calls

Mills founded Watch Duty in 2021 after not receiving official alerts or evacuation instructions when a fire burned near his Northern California home.

It’s a problem seen in many recent disasters. While the U.S. has systems for sending alerts by text, radio, and other means, the process to issue a specific warning or evacuation order can get tangled in bureaucracy and often depends on humans making difficult decisions under pressure.

Often the information people need to understand their risk is out there, Mills said, but it is hard to find and use. “The systems are really struggling to meet people where they are.”

On fire days, Mills found himself relying on volunteer radio operators who monitored scanners during emergencies and posted updates on social media. The posts helped, but social media had downsides — including how misinformation and unrelated content could drown out life-or-death updates.

A software engineer and entrepreneur, Mills recruited some of those volunteers and fellow engineers to build an answer. He made Watch Duty a nonprofit, which has helped build trust with its more than 20 million users. It received nearly $6 million in grants and donations in 2025.

Watch Duty puts emergency information in one place

Watch Duty now has about 300 volunteer “reporters” who collate and vet information from radio scanners, cameras, satellites, user-generated content and public announcements. Information is available in five languages and pushed out through maps, text feeds, and push notifications that can sound even when phones are silenced.

“You’re not going to have to go to multiple other entities, to the weather service, emergency management website, county website,” said Watch Duty meteorologist Pete Curran. “It’s in one place, in plain language, and it’s going to wake you up if you’re asleep.”

Watch Duty can sometimes push out information faster than local agencies in part because its reporters have only one role to fill, said Curran, a retired firefighter. “Our only responsibility is to watch and listen. We’re not in charge of the incident.”

The nonprofit took on flooding next because of its widespread impact. “We are seeing crazy rainfall in places that it’s not normal for them,” said Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell, U.S. Fire Administrator under President Joe Biden and longtime data scientist who is now a Watch Duty board member. “Maybe it’s never happened before, but it’s happening now, so you need to be aware.”

The app pulls weather modeling and other data from the National Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Geologic Survey. Users can view NWS flood warnings and watches, river gauge levels, and notices of possible dam or levee failures.

Users can also better understand their risk ahead of time. They can see whether they’re in a FEMA-designated flood area, or what levels on a river gauge would indicate danger, and customize notifications to be alerted if a gauge reached a certain height.

Preparation and redundancy enhance safety

Despite Watch Duty’s explosive growth, a phone app can’t solve all the challenges with informing the public during emergencies.

“I love seeing products like this come out, but one thing we know to be true in the Texas floods, is a warning is only as good as the knowledge to do something about it,” said Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers.

The ASFPM recommends knowing how to reach an evacuation zone and not just having an emergency plan, but practicing it. “One of the massive failures is not knowing what to do,” said Berginnis.

The national infrastructure for monitoring weather and alerting the public is also at risk from past and proposed funding cuts to federal agencies and local emergency warning systems. “At the end of the day, if you want eyes and ears out there, you’ve got to pay for it,” said Berginnis.

Mills stressed Watch Duty is not meant to replace the work of weather and emergency agencies. “We need National Weather Service, we need fire service, we need all this infrastructure to operate.” He said users should still enroll in their local alerting system.

And of course, a phone app is only helpful to those who download it, and who have cell coverage to use it.

“You have to have redundancy,” said Berginnis, adding that an inexpensive NOAA weather radio can fill in when other systems fail. “Sometimes we get so focused on tech, we forget the easy stuff.”