As Los Angeles Fires Burn, Residents Turn to Nonprofit Watch Duty
With unfounded conspiracy theories and spam spreading on social media, the fire tracking app has become a popular source of information.
Embers shoot into the sky from a burning house during the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California.
Photographer: Michael Nigro/BloombergFraser Hammersly was finishing a workout at a 24-Hour Fitness on Sunset Boulevard on Wednesday evening when her phone pinged. Watch Duty, a wildfire-tracking app she’d downloaded hours earlier, alerted her that a blaze had broken out in the hills about a mile from the gym.
She and her husband raced to their apartment in a densely populated section of Hollywood while evacuation orders were issued nearby. As a bright orange plume overtook the nearby hills, Hammersly stayed put, monitoring Watch Duty for live updates on the fire’s size and location, as well as the evacuation perimeter.