‘All hands on deck’: How Watch Duty is keeping pace with California wildfires

Like download Watch Duty and get the results there. Otherwise, do it, man. Get it online and hope it makes you feel better. I feel bad for them, honestly, you know? I’ve been through this before. But the way I approached it was by building Watch Duty, not by screaming into the ether. We all have our own coping mechanisms. Some are productive, others are not.

Screenshot: Courtesy of Watch Duty

Do you think that people being able to get more information about what’s happening on the ground will help them be smarter about what they say online? Or is all this shit still happening?

I don’t know, man. I wish I had a good answer with which to answer your question, but I don’t really care about these people. It’s just so uninteresting. People are still running from the fire right now. And that’s really what matters. I don’t need armchair reporters now. There are great reporters that aren’t on Watch Duty, like a group of people relaying information to the population on X, which is great. I’m glad they do it. I wish they had a better platform for this. There are still great people on social media, but unfortunately you have to sift through Bitcoin porn and other random stuff that’s being overrun by Chinese bots right now.

So what’s next? How will Watch Duty approach this fire in the next few days in particular, and then the fires beyond that?

This is the time for Mike Tyson’s expression: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Nowadays, we get punched in the face frequently. When I’m in this situation, we don’t make strategic plans.

We are extraordinarily tactical. We focus on what’s in front of us, just like a firefighter would. That’s what we’re doing today, keeping our servers online, feeding the engineers, making sure they can keep this thing running as we see three levels of exponential growth. And then reporters also need sleep, they need pep talks, and they need help. And so it’s just a matter of, ‘Get over this,’ man. We’re about to experience another wind event tonight. We’re far from done, and tonight is going to be another bad night.

What about the long term? What’s the future of how people use Watch Duty?

I can talk about long-term things because I’ve been thinking about them for a long time. We’re really thinking a lot about what looks to be another Watch Duty disaster. We are actively developing that now. We’re working on making sure we can do the same thing we did in Los Angeles next time Hurricane Helen. Because those floods were catastrophic. People did not have enough warning, and they did not understand it. There is good data that is not presented to the masses. We want to be the voice of reason during these really difficult times. This is what’s next for us when we get past this nonsense.

Beats sits there in despair.

Yes. I have to be a builder, you know?