A notification popped up on Liam Winstead’s computer screen, alerting him to a potential grass fire.
“It looks like it's near the mall in Carlsbad along the 78,” said Winstead, a staff reporter with Watch Duty, a nonprofit fire information app.
The clock started ticking for him to confirm if it was a real fire and whether it posed any danger.
Winstead pulled up live lookout cameras in the area to search for smoke. He then toggled over to Caltrans’ real-time traffic map, looking for highway slowdowns that could indicate the fire’s location. Emergency radio feeds streamed in his headphones, allowing him to monitor fire response chatter.
“I usually have two feeds going,” Winstead said — one in either ear.
He switched between tabs and windows with the keystroke fluency of a seasoned pro. But if you’re picturing Winstead working in a command center surrounded by walls of monitors and high tech equipment, think again.
The recent college grad was toiling away in the bedroom of his UTC apartment, using a small MacBook, a single monitor and a radio. Aside from a desk and modest bed for this 6’5” frame, the room was virtually empty (in fairness, he did just move in).
But from this unassuming setup, Winstead holds tremendous responsibility. When he and a volunteer colleague confirmed the Carlsbad fire was real and posed a risk to nearby residents, Winstead sent a notification to Watch Duty’s San Diego County subscribers. The alert lit up more than half a million phones.
Watch Duty is quickly becoming an essential tool for both everyday residents and emergency responders who need fast, reliable information when a wildfire ignites. Launched in 2021 in Santa Rosa, the app’s coverage area has spread from just a few Northern California counties to roughly half of the United States.
Watch Duty combines information about wildfires and evacuations from a variety of sources in one central place. Paid staff reporters and an army of volunteer contributors provide real-time updates based on changing conditions and emergency radio traffic.
The company also plans to roll out newer features for the professional version of the app that could change how firefighters confront blazes.
Former Cal Fire Chief Ken Pimlott told KPBS he believes Watch Duty is here to stay — and its role will only grow over time.
“If I've seen anything have the single greatest impact on engaging the public (during) wildfires, this is the tool that's done it,” said Pimlott, whose firefighting career spanned more than 30 years. “Watch Duty has really found a niche that, honestly, needed to be filled as the fire problem continues to grow across the Western United States.”
But Watch Duty hasn’t won over everyone in the fire world. While many departments have forged working relationships — and even partnerships — with the company, it’s still building trust.
Humble launch
John Clarke Mills and David Merritt launched Watch Duty in 2021 to address a burning problem: If you wanted to find essential information about a wildfire — like its size, the weather conditions or evacuation orders — you had to glean details from multiple websites, apps and social media pages.
Mills discovered this firsthand after multiple wildfires caused him to evacuate from his home in Sonoma County. So he came up with a plan to build a user-friendly app that centralized these disparate information threads.
“He told me about the problem he was facing and kind of a rough idea of what he wanted to build out,” Merritt told KPBS in a recent interview. “I thought it was really fascinating.”
Neither Mills nor Merritt have a firefighting background. They both come from the tech world. At first, Merritt volunteered his free time to help build the app.
Watch Duty initially launched in a few Northern California counties, including Sonoma and Napa. The following year — after gaining nearly 100,000 users — it expanded throughout California. Soon, Merritt quit his software engineering job to become the full-time CTO of Watch Duty.
To scale up, the app relied on trained volunteer reporters to deliver information to users. Some were retired dispatchers or firefighters who battled flames on the ground; others were fire nerds who obsessed over tracking blazes from afar.
And it wasn’t just concerned residents who were downloading the app.
“It was a big surprise that the information gap also existed on the professional side,” Merritt said. “With different firefighting agencies working together, there isn't a common operating platform.”
Firefighters and other emergency responders began using Watch Duty on the frontlines, according to Merritt, as “kind of as a side effect of building this information platform for the public.”
Pimlott confirmed its widespread use among professionals.
“Unofficially, everyone in the public safety arena is using it,” he said. “All the data is right there for them.”
Watch Duty created a professional subscription tailored to these expert users. The “Pro Membership” allows users to layer maps with land ownership perimeters, pre-planned evacuation zones and critical infrastructure — all useful information for firefighters on the ground.
Soon, the app will offer those power users fire progression models and real-time vegetation conditions to help them assess the potential spread of wildfires.
The app now covers 22 states and has grown to upwards of 17 million unique users, including 136,000 paying members. Last year, Watch Duty brought in $5.6 million in funding, according to its annual report. Nearly half came from paying members and individual donations. The rest came in the form of grants, including one worth $2 million from Google.
From volunteer to employee
As a kid, Winstead dreamed of being a firefighter.
After all, the threat of fires constantly lurked around their San Marcos home. In kindergarten, his family was evacuated during the 2007 Witch Fire. The blaze torched nearly 200,000 acres in San Diego County and destroyed more than 1,000 homes. The Cocos Fire seven years later also put them under evacuation orders. Many other fires in the area sent smoke columns arching above their house.
Over time, Winstead’s dreams of fighting fires faded. But his fascination with them stayed. In high school, he had a similar experience as Mills, his future Watch Duty boss. He went looking for information about nearby fires but didn’t find much online.
So he started tracking fires himself. Listening to radio feeds, Winstead familiarized himself with emergency response lingo. Soon, he began posting updates about local fires on a community Facebook group and on Twitter, gaining a committed local following.
Winstead, still in high school, kept his hobby on the down-low.
“I honestly didn't tell too many people,” he said. “I don't know if I was embarrassed or what … I mean, my parents thought it was pretty cool.”
He planned to give it up when he started college at UC San Diego. And then a burgeoning app called Watch Duty reached out after following his work on social media. He joined on as a volunteer.
“I was probably putting in like 10, 20 hours a week in college,” he said. “And then when summer came, instead of having an internship, I volunteered with Watch Duty. I was probably putting in full-time, like 40, 50 hours.”
He graduated last year with a degree in real estate development. It looked like it might be time to move on from the wildfire tracking game and pick up an entry-level nine-to-five.
But just when he thought he was out, they pulled him back in.
“Watch Duty was really expanding and they offered me a full-time job,” he said. “I happily accepted it.”
Winstead reports on fires across Watch Duty’s entire coverage area, often working alongside volunteers. But his specialty is covering fires in San Diego and the surrounding region.
“Local knowledge is key to this,” he said. “Knowing where a fire is going to spread, knowing which communities are going to be impacted — you really can't understand without local knowledge.”
Sometimes, he’s a little too close to the action. Like in June, when a fire sparked around the corner from his parents’ house in San Marcos, where he was living at the time.
“I went outside and pretty soon after I started listening (to radio traffic), the smoke started billowing towards me, ash started falling on my computer,” he said.
Out of an abundance of caution, his family left the house.
“I ended up evacuating to a Starbucks,” Winstead said. “I needed the Wi-Fi and reported on the fire from there.”
Building trust
Battling wildfires can be a territorial business — on the ground and when it comes to sharing information.
The folks at Watch Duty have experienced some of that first hand.
“I can say that we've had a wildly varying response from different states, from different agencies,” Merritt said. “Some people see what we're doing, see the intent behind it, and see the impact and come with open arms.”
But, he added, “I can also say that not everyone has had that response.”
Merritt declined to offer the specific names of agencies that remain icy. But Pimlott said he isn’t surprised by the reluctance.
“We, as firefighters — or really any profession — oftentimes we get blinded by our profession,” he said. “‘This is how we've done it.’ And going forward — change is hard."
KPBS reached out to Cal Fire to ask its opinion of Watch Duty and how the app fits into the bigger information ecosystem when a fire breaks out. The statewide agency did not offer a ringing endorsement.
"While many applications aim to inform the public by disseminating information based on unverified sources, their good intentions do not negate the potential risks associated with sharing inaccurate information inadvertently,” wrote Battalion Chief Brent Pascua, spokesperson for Cal Fire, in an emailed statement. “Therefore, it is essential to recognize that these platforms should not be regarded as official sources of information."
Watch Duty sees room for both to coexist.
“Watch Duty was built as a nonprofit to complement, not replace, those official channels,” wrote Katlyn Cummings, a spokesperson for Watch Duty, in an email after reviewing Cal Fire’s statement. “We’ve consistently heard from both community members and firefighters that having both sources of information side by side adds real value.”
Pimlott encouraged fire agencies to see Watch Duty as a valuable partner in the effort to keep people safe during fires.
“If we're going to be successful, we need to be open to the partnership with the private sector, the tech industry and others,” he said. “Watch Duty is not going away.”
