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Instead of periodically checking your phone or staring at a computer screen for changes in wind, relative humidity, or air quality, you can now set your own custom thresholds to have alerts sent directly to you.

💨 Want to know when the wind gusts over 50 MPH on the nearest peak?  Turn on the Weather Stations map layer and then select a station and set up your own alerts.

😷 Want to know when AQI crosses 150?  Turn on the Air Quality Index (AQI) map layer and then select any PurpleAir sensor to set up notifications for that sensor.

We hope that this provides even more situational awareness to you, your loved ones, and the first responder community.

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Watch Duty and PulsePoint today announced a new collaboration that connects PulsePoint vegetation fire incidents with corresponding Watch Duty incidents—combining the strengths of both platforms to provide a more complete picture for those affected by a wildfire.   The partnership brings together two trusted nonprofit organizations that exist to inform and support communities when emergencies strike.

Watch Duty, powered by active and retired firefighters and first responders, provides wildfire alerts and situational updates. PulsePoint, in partnership with local public safety agencies, provides real-time notifications and resource information directly from the 911 system. By joining forces, the organizations are partnering to deepen the help and power of community members to access timely and actionable information when it matters most.

“PulsePoint has been a lifesaving tool in my community for years and was the inspiration to build Watch Duty,” said John Mills, CEO and Co-Founder of Watch Duty. “We value working with partners who share our belief that timely, accurate information helps save lives. This came really naturally for us. We’re simply doing what is right and making it easier for people and first responders to stay informed during potentially urgent events.”

“Through better integration between our platforms, PulsePoint and Watch Duty are working to make it easier to access timely and actionable information during a wildfire emergency,” said Richard Price, President and Founder of PulsePoint. “Wildfires are devastating our communities and collaboration and innovation in this space is more important than ever. We are committed to working together to improve the effectiveness and promise of both our products.”

This collaboration reflects a shared commitment to ensuring communities have access to the right information at the right time. With vegetation fires and other emergencies becoming more frequent, Watch Duty and PulsePoint will continue to explore partnerships that strengthen preparedness and public safety.

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We are truly honored to be named one of TIME’s Most Influential Companies of 2025 for our work during California’s historic Palisades and Eaton Fires.

The outpouring of support and praise for our work is humbling—but make no mistake, awards are not why we do this.  

We do this because we have to.  

We do this for you, for us, our families, our neighbors, our communities, and our first responders who risk their lives for ours.  
We do this because these fires that are ripping through our towns show no signs of letting up.  

But neither are we.

All of this recognition we are receiving is not just overwhelming – it’s foreign to us. We don’t hold advanced degrees from prestigious schools. We didn’t chase fancy jobs to drive fancy cars. We’ve never had much interest in the status quo — and it’s no surprise that most of us didn’t grow up doing what we were told.

But what we do have is heart. 
And grit. 
And the unshakable belief that service comes before self. 

We make deals on a handshake.
And our word is our bond.  
We are radio operators, engineers, firefighters, dispatchers, geeks, ranchers, and farmers.  

We are the most unlikely of folk to do something like this which makes it that much more special.
But we’re not alone.

With that, we’d like to dedicate this award to you — the people like us — the misfits, the hackers, the weirdos, the non-obvious, and the rebels.  The ones who know that the status quo is broken and wake up every day to fight to change it.

We see you.  

We are you. 

We are proof that sometimes it's the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.

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Introducing Watch Duty Teams, a powerful new way to manage your organization’s memberships with discounted pricing starting at just 25 users.  

With Teams, you’ll receive all the same features as either basic or professional, but with powerful administrative tools including consolidated billing and invoicing, centralized user management, and support for single sign-on (SSO). With these enhancements, organizations of all sizes can now deploy Watch Duty at scale while maintaining the security, control, and accountability they require.

Key Features of Watch Duty Teams:

• Consolidated Billing and Invoicing - Manage all users under one account with a single invoice, simplifying accounting and renewals

• User Management - Easily add, remove, and assign memberships to users within an organization

• Single Sign-On (SSO) Integration - Seamlessly and securely connect with existing identity providers to manage user access

To purchase or upgrade your account, simply open the main menu (☰) in the app and click on “Membership” or reach out to us directly at sales@watchduty.org. 

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Recent Professional Features You May Have Missed

• Broadcastify Feed Catalog - Now you can easily find nearby radio feeds in a given area, sorted by most active—no more hunting for the right feed

• Map Measuring Tools - Measure distance between two points and see bearing and acreage as well as drop a pin to get the exact latitude, longitude, and county information

• More Coordinate Formats - Incident location coordinates are now displayed in DD, DDM, and DMS

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Upcoming Pro & Team Features

• GIS/ESRI Layer Import - Soon, you’ll be able to upload your own internal map data directly into Watch Duty, making it accessible to your Pro users. In early testing, organizations have successfully imported everything from power lines and fire stations to a wide variety of other critical assets. With this new capability, your team can achieve shared situational awareness to enhance field safety and infrastructure protection—right within the app you already know and trust.

• Fire Progression Models - We’ll be bringing the incredible work of the fire science research community directly into Watch Duty Pro. You'll be able to view and compare many of the widely used fire progression models right within the app. You will be able to see and compare many of the generally available models right within the app.

• Fuel Types and Moisture Readings - View the comprehensive FBFM40 (40 Scott and Burgan Fire Behavior Fuel Models) classification system as a new base map layer to view the vegetation types and fuel loads. Additionally, view recent fuel readings that include moisture, fuel type, and fuel category.

• ‍Weather Stations and Alerts - This summer we are not only adding over 600,000 weather stations like RAWS to our map, we will give you the ability to alert on individual thresholds. For example, want to know when relative humidity (RH) drops below 5% in a given region? Or when gusts top 70 MPH on a nearby peak? Now you can stop the guesswork and get ground truth data, rather than prediction, sent directly to you.

Our prescribed fire data is now publicly available outside of Watch Duty through Esri's ArcGIS Online, providing valuable information to the public, fire services, and the research community.

By making this data openly accessible, we hope to support efforts to normalize prescribed fire as a critical tool for land management and wildfire prevention. This initiative will also help reduce false alarms and unnecessary dispatches, allowing emergency services to focus on real threats.Additionally, researchers and scientists can now use this data for a wide range of applications, from improving air quality models to training AI for wildfire detection and enhancing fire behavior predictions.This is an important leap forward in improving wildfire awareness, response, and prevention. Explore the dataset and see how it can support a safer, more informed future: https://watchduty.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=1784011a31104a45a584b26dbd23adfe

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