Is Early Notification from the Government a Savior? The Capabilities of Rapidly Growing Disaster Tracking Apps Across the U.S.

The Era When Red Flames and Blue Torrents Appear on the Same Map

Next to the red areas indicating wildfires, blue regions indicating flood risks spread.

Disasters that were once discussed in separate seasons and regions now appear simultaneously on a single smartphone screen.

The disaster tracking app "Watch Duty," which is rapidly gaining presence in the United States, originally started as a small initiative to deliver wildfire information to residents of California. However, in recent years, as fire risks have expanded beyond the traditional western regions to the south and east, and concerns over short-term heavy rains and river flooding have intensified, the app's role has significantly changed.

Currently, Watch Duty is not just a "fire map." It is evolving into a disaster information platform that aggregates information directly linked to evacuation and safety checks, such as wildfires, floods, and power outages, and notifies users on a single screen.

Its growth is not just about a convenient app becoming popular. Rather, it reflects the weaknesses of modern disaster prevention systems, where crucial information from government and meteorological agencies is scattered across multiple sites and announcements, making it difficult for residents in danger to understand.

Information Exists, Yet It Doesn't Reach People

During disasters, it's not that there is no information at all.

Many pieces of information, such as weather warnings, evacuation zones, river levels, road closures, firefighting activities, aircraft movements, and power outage areas, are announced by various agencies.

The problem is that they exist in separate places.

Residents have to check the municipality's emergency information page, read weather authority warnings, search social media of fire and sheriff's offices, and compare local news. Moreover, during disasters, power outages, communication congestion, evacuation preparations, and contacting family members overlap.

It's not easy to quickly decipher multiple pieces of information, including technical terms, and decide whether to "stay at home," "flee by car," or "avoid certain roads."

What Watch Duty provides is not new weather forecasts themselves, but the ability to convert scattered information into a usable form for everyday people.

It gathers government alerts, weather forecasts, river observations, satellite images, surveillance cameras, fire and emergency radio, announcements from local agencies, and information submitted by users, which are then verified by staff and volunteers. Based on this, it organizes danger zones and evacuation information on a map and notifies users in simple language.

This process of "gathering, verifying, and simplifying" holds great value for users.

The Los Angeles Fire Catastrophe That Rapidly Expanded Its Use

What significantly raised Watch Duty's profile was the large-scale fire around Los Angeles in January 2025.

As flames approached residential areas, many residents opened the app to check evacuation zones and the direction of the fire's progression. According to the Associated Press, over 2.5 million people used Watch Duty that week alone.

In areas where official announcements were delayed or where information from multiple agencies was confused, the ability to check map and timeline updates on a single screen was strongly supported.

In Watch Duty's 2025 annual report, the number of annual active users reached 16.8 million, with 1.17 billion page views. The basic membership, which costs $25 annually, exceeded 110,000, and there was a rapid increase in professional users from fire, power, and water sectors.

However, it is important to note that the "user" numbers differ depending on the report.

The counting methods differ between annual active users, unique users during specific periods, and cumulative users. While the numbers cannot be simply lined up, it is common that emergency use on the scale of millions occurred, and the user base continued to expand thereafter.

Why a Wildfire App Expanded to Floods

In June 2026, Watch Duty officially added nationwide flood information.

Floods differ from wildfires. While the progression of fire can change rapidly due to wind direction, terrain, and vegetation serving as fuel, floods require different types of information, such as rainfall forecasts, river levels, levees, dams, and floodplains.

Watch Duty has organized a system to display flood advisories and warnings, river gauge levels, notifications about dams and levees, and inundation forecast areas by compiling data from the National Weather Service, NOAA, USGS, FEMA, and others.

Users can not only register specific regions but also receive notifications when nearby river levels reach set thresholds.

The aim is not to show a large amount of specialized data but to enable users to quickly understand "what danger is approaching their location and to what extent."

The background to the demand for flood functionality includes deadly flash floods that occurred in places like Texas. In disasters where water levels rise rapidly, it's not just the fact that a warning has been issued that matters, but how it relates to one's actions.

To avoid situations where roads are already flooded by the time the danger is known, a system is needed to check changes in water levels and rainfall before evacuation orders are issued.

Climate Change Expands "Unexpected" Regions

The expansion of Watch Duty is not unrelated to the changing geography of disasters.

A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, leading to heavy rainfall when conditions align. Meanwhile, high temperatures draw moisture from the surface and vegetation, creating an environment where fires can easily spread in dry areas.

In other words, the same warming can intensify both "heavy rain" and "flammable land."

In 2025, the United States experienced 23 weather and climate disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion each, with total damages estimated at $115 billion.

In the long term, the average interval of billion-dollar disasters has shrunk from about once every 82 days in the 1980s to about once every 16 days in the past decade.

However, the expansion of damage cannot be explained solely by climate change.

Housing development in fire-prone areas and floodplains, aging infrastructure, lack of evacuation means, insurance systems, and municipal staffing shortages are social conditions that also amplify losses.

The rapid increase in Watch Duty usage in new regions reflects the fact that the conventional wisdom of "it was okay before" is becoming less applicable.

Support Spreading on Social Media—"An App You Should Install First"

Looking at public posts on Reddit and other platforms, Watch Duty is becoming a staple tool recommended among residents in disaster areas.

In response to concerns from residents in mountainous areas about wildfires, long-time residents of those areas have recommended the app, noting its ability to grasp fire information and evacuation destinations and its quicker response compared to other sources.

In another region, posts from evacuation experiences noted that Watch Duty was the most comprehensive and helpful due to different notification systems operated by multiple counties.

Posts from Los Angeles expressed dissatisfaction with official alerts while simultaneously praising Watch Duty.

What users want is not just a system that sounds a loud warning but an explainable alert where they can check the target area, reason for danger, map, images, and update history themselves.

Simply being notified that "it's dangerous" doesn't clarify whether their home is affected, if the area where their family is located is in danger, or which direction to evacuate. Watch Duty is valued for allowing users to verify the situation themselves after receiving notifications.

Interestingly, even before the flood functionality was officially added, there were posts in Texas community forums asking if there was a "flood version of Watch Duty."

While people traditionally followed municipal or county social media accounts, there was a demand for more localized information to be available in one place due to dispersed information.

Reactions on social media show that users do not choose information based solely on whether it is official or unofficial, but judge reliability based on speed, specificity, integration with maps, and continuity of updates.

However, these are only parts of public posts and do not represent a survey of the entire user base. It's important to note that those with a high interest in disasters or strong satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the app are more likely to post.

Three Concerns Behind High Ratings

While the usefulness of Watch Duty is acknowledged in social media and expert discussions, several limitations are pointed out.

The first is dependency on communication and devices.

Notifications from the app do not reach those who do not own smartphones, elderly individuals who find operations difficult, residents in areas without cell coverage, or those who cannot charge their devices due to power outages. This issue is more severe in mountainous or low-income areas.

Even if one owns a device, if the app is not pre-installed and notifications or location information are not permitted, the function to alert danger does not work adequately.

The second is dependency on information sources.

Watch Duty does not replace government agencies by installing its own river gauges or weather satellites nationwide. Much of the basic data is collected by meteorological agencies, fire departments, municipalities, and public utilities.

If the observation networks or personnel of public agencies weaken, the information that the app can organize also decreases.

The third is overreliance on a single service.

Even if the app delivers the correct alert, residents cannot act if they do not know evacuation routes. Situations can arise where notifications are turned off, location information is incorrect, or roads are already flooded.

Therefore, Watch Duty also encourages users to continue registering for official local alerts.

In disaster prevention, "redundancy," which involves layering multiple means such as apps, emergency alerts, sirens, radios, neighbors, and municipal communications, is important.

Growing Like a Startup Despite Being Non-Profit

Watch Duty is operated as a non-profit organization, with basic features offered for free and no advertisements displayed. Meanwhile, it is rapidly expanding its functionality by combining paid memberships, donations, grants, and corporate contracts.

This approach differs from typical social media that aim to increase user time to boost ad revenue.

The philosophy that usage frequency can decrease if there are no disasters contributes to trust in the service.

Corporate use is also increasing.

For power companies, being able to confirm the location of fires and power transmission facilities on the same map can speed up decisions on equipment protection and worker safety. Railroads, telecommunications, and water utilities also need to quickly grasp the impact range of disasters.

If field personnel can reduce the time spent cross-referencing multiple maps and internal systems, decisions could be shortened from hours to seconds.

On the other hand, concentrating a highly public information infrastructure in a single non-profit organization poses sustainability challenges.

Can operations continue if donations or membership fees decrease? Can servers and staff withstand the surge in usage? How will misinformation or inaccurate local posts be eliminated? Where will the boundaries of responsibility be set?

As it grows, Watch Duty will be required to take on the accountability of a quasi-public infrastructure rather than just being a "convenient app."

Not Replacing Public Agencies, But Reconnecting Them

To interpret Watch Duty's success as simply "the private sector is better than the government" misses the essence.

Many of the alerts and observations displayed by the app are based on observation networks, expert personnel, communication equipment, and research results that public agencies have built over the years.

If fire departments or municipalities do not disseminate on-site information, the materials for verification are also lost.

In the U.S., concerns about disaster response capabilities continue, such as lawsuits over FEMA's large-scale personnel reduction plans.

While the structure where apps continue to fill the gaps left by weakened public agencies may be useful in the short term, it does not necessarily lead to a safe society in the long term.

Private or non-profit services do not have the legal authority to issue evacuation orders or the responsibility to maintain a nationwide observation network. If only apps that organize information grow while the public infrastructure that underpins them shrinks, there is a risk that both will eventually cease to function.

What is needed is not to choose between government or private sector.

It is to connect the authority of observation, alerts, and evacuation orders held by the government with the user-friendly maps, rapid notifications, and information organization capabilities of services like Watch Duty.

The ideal state is one where residents can reach reliable information without having to visit multiple sites to protect their lives. And that the same level of warning reaches those who cannot use specific apps.

"An App That Hopes for a Day It Won't Be Needed" Rather Than "An App That Draws Attention"

There is a contradiction in disaster information services.

The more users increase, the more it seems to grow as a business, but the moment usage surges is also a moment when people's lives are threatened somewhere.

The reason Watch Duty is supported is that it handles this contradiction relatively honestly.

Instead of keeping people on the screen for long periods, it aims for them to move to evacuation or preparation once they obtain the necessary information. The stance that it is okay if it is not used during quiet seasons is unusual among digital services competing for attention.

However, as its presence becomes indispensable, the challenges of public alert systems also become apparent.

In an era where wildfires and floods are displayed on the same map, what is needed is not flashier alerts.

It is information that allows people to understand without hesitation who is at risk, what danger is approaching, when it will occur, and what actions to take.

The rapid growth of Watch Duty not only indicates the expansion of climate disasters but also how desperately people are seeking "actionable information."

Source URL

The New York Times: Reports on the growth of Watch Duty, flood response, corporate use, and regional disparities that formed the basis of this article##HTML