With the terrible fires ravaging Los Angeles, residents are flocking to Watch Duty, an app that provides valuable information in real time with the luxury of being more precise than local authorities.
In the United States, Watch Duty has been very successful since the start of the fires in Los Angeles. On its website as in its app version, Watch Duty indicates in real time the extent of the damage caused, via an open street map which displays several useful information: number of hectares burned to ashes, orders for evacuation in progress, emergency shelters or even food collection points for the population. A technological innovation serving citizens and which supplements the instructions of the authorities.
Founded in 2021, the application created by John Mills has been downloaded 2,000,000 times as of January 11, and had 14,000,000 users during the first week of the fires ravaging the Los Angeles region. Today, Watch Duty has even dethroned ChatGPT in first place in the App Store in the United States and this is not insignificant. Since the application can boast of being more efficient and better informed than the Californian authorities on the extent of the fires. Thus, according to the New York Times, “the app sometimes provided faster and more reliable updates than the city’s buggy mobile notification system.”
Watch Duty: why create an app for fires?
The starting point for Watch Duty actually comes from a forest fire. Shortly after moving to Sonoma County, California, the app creator encountered a wildfire, but received little news of the incident from authorities. John Mills then discovered on social networks that Internet users, also affected by the fire, were sharing updates that were more recent than those from the authorities. It was then that the idea was born to launch Watch Duty with the help of a team of citizen volunteers ready to report in real time on the extent of the damage caused by a fire.
California being a state prone to the outbreak of forest fires, this type of initiative offers an additional means for the population to be informed about the risk or in the event of evacuation. Because the application does not hesitate to identify the extent of the fires and indicate the measures taken by the local authorities. Furthermore, at a time when more and more phenomena of this type are occurring, Watch Duty has the advantage of being updated several times a day and of listing all types of fires declared by volunteers or firefighters. . Its only negative point is undoubtedly that the application can only be used in around twenty states in the United States…
Watch Duty: an inspiration for the French authorities?
The use of Watch Duty in the Los Angeles fires is a reminder of the value of being informed in real time when faced with risk. Thus, the arrival of such support in France, or in Europe, would be a very good idea and would offer populations affected by a fire a means of knowing the extent of the damage, the number of hectares burned or even get to places of refuge more easily. Additionally, in the event of a lack of information from the authorities, support similar to Watch Duty would be a good backup tool.
In France, the various disasters that have recently affected the territory (fires in 2022, floods and floods in 2024) remind us of the need to protect ourselves from possible danger. Thus, since June 2022, the FR-Alert system has existed and helps to warn citizens. Concretely, this system put in place by the government allows the authorities (law enforcement, emergency services, etc.) to send notifications in real time to the mobile phones of people found in an area facing danger. Populations are then quickly informed that an incident has taken place or that there is danger nearby, so that they can react accordingly.
Faced with the multiplication of natural hazards and disasters in the years to come, the need to inform the population will become more and more essential on a daily basis. A tool such as Watch Duty responds to this demand and could serve as an example or basis for reflection on a massive development of more effective and more collaborative supports in risk prevention.
