‘All Hands on Deck’: How Monitoring Work Responds to the California Wildfires

Like, download Watch Duty and get results there. Otherwise, have at it, man. Have it online and hope it makes you feel better. I feel sorry for them, honestly, you know? I’ve been through it before. But the way I coped was building Watch Duty, not screaming into the ether. We all have our own ways of dealing with it. Some work while others don’t.

Photo: Courtesy of Watch Duty

Do you think that knowing more about what’s happening on the ground will help people be smarter about what they say online? Or will all the distractions still happen?

I don’t know, man. I wish I had a better answer to your question, but I don’t, I like those people. It’s just not fun. People are fleeing the fire right now. And that is the most important thing. I don’t need a press conference now. There are senior journalists who are not in Watch Duty, like a group of people out there sending a message to people on X, which is great. I’m glad they do. I wish they had a better platform. There are still some famous people on social media, but unfortunately you have to filter out the Bitcoin porn and other random stuff that is being crushed by Chinese bots right now.

So what’s next? How does Watch Duty approach the days following the fire in particular, and then the fire beyond?

This is a great moment for Mike Tyson who said: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Right now, we are being punched again and again. When I’m in that mode, we don’t make plans.

We are incredibly smart. We focus on what’s in front of us, just like firefighters do. That’s what we’re doing today, keeping our servers online, keeping our engineers fed, making sure they can keep this thing going while we’re facing three major explosions. Then journalists also need sleep, they need discussion, they need support. And so it’s really “get through it,” man. We are about to experience another wind event tonight. We are not finished and tonight will be one of the worst.

What about the long term? What is the future of how people use Watch Duty?

I can talk about the long term because I have been thinking about it for years. We’re thinking a lot about what it looks like to have some disasters at Watch Duty. We are expanding this rapidly. We are trying to make sure we do what we did in LA in the future Hurricane Helene. Because the flood water was dangerous. People didn’t have enough warning, they didn’t understand. And there’s a lot of good stuff out there that isn’t being brought to the masses. We want to be the voice of thought in these difficult times. And that is what is next for us when we go through this nonsense.

He beats sitting there in frustration.

Yes. I should be an architect, you know?