John Mills created Watch Duty, an app that alerts people about wildfires, after a 50,000-acre fire came within a quarter mile of his ranch. He and his family had received no timely warnings despite the danger. Mills built the app so others wouldn't face the same helplessness.
Chapters
Oh, you're going to make me cry. I've had a fucking hard week, man.
You okay?
I mean, you just have some days you're just so proud of what you're doing and then you're just in the shower fucking crying because you know, you know, people is fucking running for their lives. I've been through a couple of pretty close calls here on my ranch. Fires come very close to me. One is a 50,000 acre fire ended about a quarter mile from my property. Another one was quarter mile away in the other direction. That was another fire that I wasn't alerted about. The helicopters or how I knew there was a fire. Not because anybody told me. And so.
So the is burning outside of your home and you find out about it because you see a fire helicopter fly over you.
Yeah. That's how you get alerted. Yeah.
That's a motivation for a lot of people to complain. That's a motivation for a lot of people to get angry. That's a motivation for a lot of people to yell at their mayor or congressman or whoever. You then went and built an app to give yourself the information you needed.
