‘All hands on deck’: How patrols keep pace with California wildfires

Like, download Watch Duty and get results there. If not, do it, man. Do 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 cope is by building Watch Duty, not by shouting it into the ether. We all have coping mechanisms. Some are productive and some are not.

Screenshot: Courtesy of Watch Duty

Do you think people being able to learn more about what’s happening on the ground will help them be smarter about what they say online? Or will all these bad shares still happen?

I don’t know, man. I wish I could answer your question well, but I’m not really interested in those people. It’s just too uninteresting. People are still running from the fire. And that’s what really matters. Now I don’t need reporters sitting in the chair. X has great reporters that aren’t on Watch Duty, like a bunch of people relaying information to the population, which is great. I’m glad they do. I wish they had a better platform for it. There are still great people on social media, but unfortunately you have to browse through the Bitcoin porn and other random stuff that is currently being taken down by Chinese bots.

What will happen next? How does Watch Duty approach the next few days of this fire in particular and the fires that follow?

This is a great time for Mike Tyson’s quote: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” We are getting punched in the face many times right now. When I’m in that mode, we don’t make strategic plans.

We are extraordinarily tactical. As firefighters, we focus on what’s in front of us. That’s what we’re doing today, keeping our servers online, feeding the engineers, making sure they can keep doing this because we’re experiencing explosive growth on three scales. And then reporters also need sleep, they need pep talks, they need help. And so it’s really just “get over it,” man. We are about to experience another wind event this evening. We are not done and tonight is going to be another bad night.

But long-term? What is the future of how people will use Watch Duty?

I can talk about long-term things because I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. We really think a lot about what other disasters look like at Watch Duty. We are actively developing it now. We’re working on making sure we can do the same thing next time that we did in LA Hurricane Helene. Because those floods were catastrophic. People were not warned enough, they did not understand. And there is good information out there that is not being shared with the masses. We want to be the voice of reason in these difficult times. And here’s what’s next for us when we get through this nonsense.

Sitting there in despair.

Yes. I have to be constructive, you know?