Service Adds Flood Alerts to Its Wildfire Program

Watch Duty, and wildfire warning app, bringing flood alerts to its celebrities disaster awareness service. This is the second type of disaster that can be included in the scale, after wildfire; is available as a free update. If you have the app, let it track your location, and if you’re near a flood zone, Watch Duty will send you push notifications and flood information.

Not worth it it started in 2021 looking at the California wildfires. The program has expanded to the entire US, where it employs a combination of paid “reporters” staff and many volunteers who monitor emergency response radio systems and translate disaster information to program users.

Watch Duty became a the main source on the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles last year, providing real-time information on fire safety that users have come to rely on. Over the next year, Watch Duty built on that recognition and brought in thousands of users and partnerships, including one with Amazon. Ring cameras which allows people to share their ring videos in Watch Duty if a fire is nearby.

Flood control takes a different approach than wildfire tracking. Floodwaters are easy to manage, because water flows in predictable ways. Barring a dam burst or other unforeseen event, flood patterns are easy to follow.

“The difference with flooding is that we have more warning,” said John Mills, CEO of Watch Duty. “So to be honest, it’s a little bit easier on some things.”

Simple tracking and reporting does not mean that floods are more serious than fires. Information about flooding comes from various agencies in the US, such as FEMA, the National Weather Service, the US Geological Survey, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The problem with this, Mills argues, is that there is so much information from so many different sources that people have difficulty integrating everything and getting a clear picture of what is worrying them. What they want to do with Watch Duty is to release this information to make it straight.

Courtesy of Watch Duty

Courtesy of Watch Duty

“When you’re told to do something, it’s too late,” says Mills. “It’s too small, it doesn’t work. With Watch Duty, you can start to integrate a lot of information on one screen to make an informed decision.”

Watch Duty will not be able to provide more detailed information, such as when each tree will fall into the flood zone. Mills says the Flood Watch Duty will be displayed simply, highlighting where the flood is and where the water is. Flood forecasts rely on boxes that detect the height of the water. Watch Duty now allows users to locate the nearest buoy and set up a notification alert that when it reaches a level high enough that the flood could become dangerous.

Watch Duty has reported flooding in the past, but these were isolated incidents. Getting flooding integrated into the service has taken some time. Mills says having more disasters at Watch Duty was always the plan, but making sure the feature works has been especially difficult during busy fire hours.