Paulette Lifton woke up in a panic on Tuesday morning on her 67th birthday, smoking in the distance from her home in the Granada Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. The first person she called was her sister Annette.
“What's going on?” asked Mrs. Lifton.
“You need to download the Watch Duty app,” her sister responded.
Ms. Lifton did just that, tracking the spread of the fire via the app's map and updates as she packed her car with her most prized possessions: her favorite sequined jacket; her dogs, King Charles spaniels, Elle and Sansa; and the two Emmys she won as a sound editor for television and films.
For Ms. Lifton and thousands of other Los Angeles residents, Watch Duty has become a lifeline as they monitor the many wildfires raging in the city. In a province of nearly 10 million people, word of the app has spread by word of mouth and in online community groups.
The app has sometimes provided faster and more reliable updates than the city's buggy mobile notification system.
On Thursday evening, Los Angeles County's early warning system sent out a false evacuation alert to all residents in its jurisdiction, instead of just those near the West Hills neighborhood, which was threatened by the Kenneth Fire.
Officials said Saturday that some county residents were receiving outdated warnings after cell towers that were taken offline during the fires came back online. Watch Duty, which is among the most downloaded free apps in the Apple App Store, hasn't had these problems.
The app, founded in 2021, has had two million downloads as of Tuesday and 14 million unique users this week, Watch Duty CEO John Mills said in an interview Saturday.
Mr. Mills runs the app through a nonprofit organization with a team of 200 volunteers and 15 full-time employees, including retired firefighters and dispatchers. That team listens to radio broadcasts from emergency responders and sends live updates to the app, which maps the fires and demarcates evacuation zones.
PJ Marino, a 52-year-old actor who lives in the city's Van Nuys neighborhood, downloaded Watch Duty Tuesday night and his phone was quickly flooded with a barrage of notifications. He found himself waking up in the middle of the night to check it and has since posted several messages on social media urging his neighbors to download it.
“It's morbid, and I hate that I have to use it,” Mr. Marino said. “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 owned with her family.
She said it was “definitely” a better tool for tracking the fires than official government communications, adding that the app can be chaotic. She had to turn off the notifications to sleep at night.
Mr. Mills, an entrepreneur who lives in Sonoma County in Northern California, said he has had to evacuate three times in his life because of fires. He said he built Watch Duty because the government has never delivered anything with the same utility.
The app collects very little personal data from users, he said, adding that he runs the app through a nonprofit because he has no plans to sell it.
“This is my life and my community,” he said. “I owe it to my community not to be a disaster capitalist.”
Watch Duty is largely funded by donations and has grown in recent years as wildfires on the West Coast become more common and intense. The app currently provides coverage in 22 states west of the Mississippi River, excluding Alaska and Louisiana.
Mr Mills said he is not concerned about the app's network being able to support the influx of users as he has enough volunteers and employees to staff the service 24 hours a day.
“If things go wrong, we're here for it,” Mr Mills said. “And we're not done yet.”
