IDAHO — Thousands of Idahoans turn to the Watch Duty app to track wildfires burning near their communities during an extremely active fire season.
Watch Duty is a non-profit organization that gathers information on wildfires from official sources along with information from the community and puts it into one easy to find location.
“When the fires were so bad here a few years ago, Watch Duty was my best friend,” said McKenzie Hobson, who lives in Garden Valley.
Hobson said she learned about the app from other neighbors and started using it to monitor fires in the area by setting up custom notifications.
“You can set your parameters, so you can set it as close or as far as you want. I have mine set at like 200 miles,” Hobson said.
WATCH | Hear from Watch Duty CEO John Mills about how the non-profit app came to be
Watch Duty CEO and Co-Founder John Mills said they've grown to about 30,000,000 users over the past five years and about 250,000 of those are Idahoans.
“Unfortunately, there’s a growing need for what we do and our user count is constantly getting bigger,” Mills said.
Mills started Watch Duty five years ago after dealing with wildfires near his own neighborhood. He said he spent time searching multiple websites and social media pages trying to piece together information during emergencies and wanted to come up with a better system.
“And I realized that if I could get those radio operators to all work together instead of running their independent Facebook or Twitter pages, could we put them all together and make one platform to broadcast their message — and that’s how Watch Duty was born,” Mills said.
The organization has since grown from five or six volunteers to a staff of 70 with more than 400 volunteers.
“So what happens behind the scenes, there are hundreds of people 24/7 in shifts listening to radio traffic, first responder webpages, Facebook, wireless emergency alerts,” Mills said. “We rely on the work of the government as well, like we are consolidating information from credible sources and putting it in a consumable way to get it out there.”
Mills explained all wildfire information posted on the app is verified by real people before it appears publicly.
“People don’t know that there are human beings listening to radio traffic, handwriting messages and sending them out at three in the morning when your town is on fire,” Mills said.
The app also allows users to submit photos and information from fire zones in real time. Watch Duty said those community submissions help keep information updated as conditions change quickly.
Watch Duty also recently expanded to include information on flooding — which has proven to be popular in states like Texas according to Mills.
This story was initially reported by a journalist and has been, in part, converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
