Throughout 2025, Watch Duty was pressure-tested like never before.

The Los Angeles wildfires in January became an organization defining moment for Watch Duty and further validation of why we exist. In absolute dire moments, the official alert systems lagged or failed. Watch Duty became the trusted source of truth for residents, media, and agencies alike:

• More than 8 million people relied on Watch Duty in a single week. 
• Our platform sustained 100,000 requests per second without interruption, confirming that people want — and urgently need — fast, verified, human-translated information during moments of extreme uncertainty.
• Our platform was utilized by first responders and emergency managers throughout the incident as one of the primary sources of intelligence.

Across the country, Watch Duty teams worked 16-20 hour days, handing off monitoring insights to ensure that every family had access to rapidly evolving information on fire spread, direction, and evacuations. Those efforts have not been forgotten: in the year since, every member has heard from family after family that Watch Duty helped to save their lives.

LA was a pivotal moment, but it was also us being us - it’s what we did every day of the year across more than 13,000 incidents big and small.

By the numbers:

Meeting this moment was possible because of deep, mission-aligned partnerships and the people behind them. In-kind infrastructure and technical support from Google, Amazon Web Services, Fastly, PagerDuty, Mapbox, and others enabled Watch Duty to scale instantly under historic load, absorb unprecedented traffic surges, and remain fast, stable, and free to the public. Teams of engineers and operators work shoulder to shoulder with our staff and volunteers to safeguard Watch Duty’s reliability. When lives are on the line, they demonstrate what best-in-class collaboration between nonprofit and for-profit organizations can achieve in service of the public good.

At the same time, the nation took notice, and we were honored for our innovation and impact by leading media and technology organizations. To us, these honors reflect not just visibility, but validation that Watch Duty is building something entirely new: it is desperately needed, and it’s working.

Now, we’re bringing Watch Duty to everyone.

This year of growth surfaced both our strengths and our limits.

Our model, team, and infrastructure held throughout unprecedented events. Our feature set grew to integrate more capabilities than ever. Our impact reached families in some of their toughest moments.

But the experience also revealed how quickly demand can outpace capacity when disasters cascade nationally or when a catastrophic event strains resources. We’ve addressed this challenge by: doubling our team, strengthening our technology, and sustaining round-the-clock human monitoring to ensure life-saving information is verified, translated, and delivered without delay. 

That meant growing our leadership, technical experts, trained volunteers, and the systems that support this work, including: 

• Doubling our executive staff, engineering, and staff reporter teams, growing our team to 50 paid staff and increasing our volunteers by 60%.
• Accelerating investments in automation and AI-assisted verification, thanks to support from Google.org and The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. 
• Reinforcing our infrastructure and operational resiliency, professional onboarding and collaboration tools, and mental-health support (with BetterHelp) to protect the people doing this work around the clock. 

In December, Watch Duty achieved a defining milestone—expanding from 22 states to nationwide coverage, ensuring every community in the U.S. has access to verified, real-time wildfire intelligence when it matters most. What began just four years ago as a small community effort is now a trusted national lifeline, relied on by millions and used by frontline responders and emergency operations centers during the most critical moments. 

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We’re needed more than ever, and more is needed from us than ever.

Wildfire is no longer a distant or seasonal threat. It is reshaping where and how Americans live - crossing state lines and affecting communities that never expected to face it. Every American, regardless of geography, now has a stake in how quickly and clearly emergency information reaches the public.

And yet, the systems meant to protect us are failing. Life-saving signals live in fragmented systems never designed to serve the public. Outdated tools, inconsistent communication, and a lack of interoperable systems contributed directly to loss of life. Events are often labeled “unprecedented,” but survivors know better. From the Camp Fire to Lahaina to Los Angeles, the pattern is clear: the status quo is not keeping pace with the dangers that are facing our communities.

This is why Watch Duty exists.

Our work throughout 2025 is a testament to an extraordinary team and community who worked relentlessly to prepare for this moment — because the need could not be more urgent. We are building the future that emergency alerting demands: trusted, real-time, human-verified information that reaches people wherever they are, before it’s too late. 

There is still much to do — mountains left to move — but our purpose is clear. Lives depend on it. Together, we are proving that meaningful change is not only possible, it is already underway.

Sincerely,

Team Watch Duty

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