Watch Duty is a free, non-profit app providing real-time wildfire data, evacuation zones, air quality, and wind direction. It relies on a volunteer network and simple technology to deliver critical information quickly and accurately, potentially saving lives.
If you live in Los Angeles, you are probably already intimately familiar with Watch Duty, the free app that shows active fires, mandatory evacuation zones, air quality indexes, wind direction, and a wealth of other information that everyone, from firefighters to regular people, have come to rely on during this week’s historic and devastating wildfires. Watch Duty is unique in the tech world in that it doesn’t care about user engagement, time spent, or ad sales.
“Some of the delivery systems for push notifications and text messages that government agencies use had a 15-minute delay, which is not good for fire,” says Merritt. “We shoot to have push notifications out in under a minute. Right now, 1.5 million people in LA are getting push notifications through the app. That’s a lot of messages to send out in 60 seconds. In general, people are getting it pretty much all at the same time.
Disaster Relief Wildfires Emergency App Technology Public Service Disaster Preparedness Fire Safety
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