In 2017, the Tubbs Fire tore through Santa Rosa in the middle of the night. Many residents were never warned of the disaster coming their way. Since then, the same story has repeated in Lahaina, in Altadena, in Texas Hill Country, and in the path of Hurricane Helene: disaster arrives, and the official alert never does.
So what happens when the systems meant to warn us fail?
In this episode of Disasterproof, I went to Sonoma County to meet John Mills, founder of Watch Duty, a non-profit that has become the way millions of Americans learn a fire is headed their way.
John didn’t set out to fix emergency alerts. In 2020, he was at his off-grid home when he heard a helicopter lingering overhead. Then, a second one arrived carrying a water bucket. A fire was burning right near him and he spent the next seven days and nights glued to radio scanner traffic relayed by volunteers on Facebook and Twitter. “That’s when it hit me that the government wasn’t going to solve this problem,” he told me. “But those radio operators were.”
Building the software, he says, was the easy part. The question was whether he could convince independent radio operators scattered across California to join forces. He started writing code on May 17, 2021, and Watch Duty launched 80 days later. A few days after launch, John was in a restaurant when a fire alert went out. The whole room rang with Watch Duty’s notification sound at once. “I was just like, holy shit, what did we just do?”
“I like to tell people it’s not a success story, it’s a failure story,” John says.
We already know what a great alert system looks like: tornado warnings. After World War II, the Midwest was covered in air raid sirens, and the weather service repurposed them, paired with volunteer spotters who live in the communities they watch. One phone call from a spotter, and the siren sounds within a minute. “Very Americana,” as John puts it.
Wildfire never got that system. Instead, “the systems are crumbling and no one is building high scale, high availability software.”
Watch Duty is that software, but John is quick to say the software isn’t the point. “It’s not a software solution, it’s a people solution.” He describes Watch Duty as a signals intelligence organization. When a dispatch goes out, a Slack bot picks it up and volunteers call “ears on.” At least two or three reporters then verify what they’re hearing on scanners and wildfire cameras before an alert ever reaches your phone.
I met two of those reporters: Adam Segal, a Regional Captain covering central California, and Yusra Kauppila, a Staff Reporter who covers fires from her home in Michigan. Along with a network of fellow reporters, they keep watch 24/7 across all 50 states, from Alaska to Hawaii to Maine.
Watch Duty currently covers fires and floods, with more disaster coverage on the way. John’s goal is for it to become permanent American infrastructure: “I want people to have a fighting chance to survive the impending doom that might be coming for their town.”
What stayed with me most? It was why John does this work. “I don’t see the disaster,” he said. “I see the best in people when this happens.” When fire comes, no one cares who you voted for. Everyone bands together to fight a common enemy. Watch Duty is what that instinct looks like as software.
Watch the full episode on YouTube, or listen on Spotify.
Thanks to John Mills and the Watch Duty team, and Chief Shepley Schroth-Cary for letting us film with them. And thank you to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for their support of Disasterproof.
