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John Mills

Sunday, February 2, 2025
1:00pm Pacific Time
KQED Broadcast: 02/02/2025

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John Mills is CEO and Co-Founder of Watch Duty, an app that alerts users to nearby wildfires and firefighting efforts. Watch Duty’s “reporters” include journalists, wildfire experts, former fire service workers and other first responders who monitor radio scanners, fire maps, live video, evacuation orders, and other data in order to provide up to the minute information on active fires. The app includes interactive maps that allow users to track evacuation zones, live camera feeds, and shelter locations. More than half of its 16 million active users downloaded the app during the Los Angeles fires — in fact, during that weather event, Watch Duty became the #1 downloaded free app on the Apple Store. Mills founded the app in 2021 as a response to his own experience being impacted by wildfires, and without any profit motive. Watch Duty runs through a nonprofit, with very little user data collected, and Mills says he has no intention of selling the app. “This is my life and my community…. I owe it to my community to not be a disaster capitalist.”

Alexis Madrigal is co-host of KQED’s Forum and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He helped found the COVID Tracking Project and was previously the editor-in-chief of Fusion.