Gizmodo spoke with the creator of the app that provides vital alerts about evacuations.
Watch Duty shot to the top of the Apple App Store charts on Wednesday, racking up roughly half a million downloads in just a day as three brutal wildfires raged through Southern California, killing at least five people and forcing. The app gives users the latest alerts about fires in their area and has become a vital service for millions of users in the western U.S.
Mills said those people guided him through his issues and it took him about six more months before he realized that the same people who helped him were the key to this problem—because Watch Duty isn’t just one guy who coded an app, though Mills did that himself. It’s a team of people who actually make the thing work. Watch Duty covers 22 states and has 15 full-time staff, seven of them reporters who provide updates on the app, and dozens of volunteers.
“Engineering taught me to engineer, but then as I got older, you realize that like, if you build it, they won’t come, right?” Mills said. “Like why are you building it? Why does this matter, right? How do you get this to market? How do you really leverage technology to be able to make a difference in the world?”
Mills understands the gravity of what he’s created and the vital resource it can be in life-threatening situations. “When Watch Duty goes off in your pocket, it’s because something bad’s happening,” said Mills.
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