How Watch Duty’s wildfire tracking app became a crucial lifeline for LA

‘We view what we are doing as a public service,’ says the cofounder of the nonprofit that millions of people are relying on to stay safe.

If you live in Los Angeles, you are probably already intimately familiar with Watch Duty, the free app that shows active fires, mandatory evacuation zones, air quality indexes, wind direction, and a wealth of other information that everyone, from firefighters to regular people, have come to rely on during this week’s historic and devastating wildfires.