Watch duty is great for official info on evacs and daily fire info but you won’t get the camera pictures of a column collapse and why it matters and won’t get the 2am update pic of a fire running upslope through timber. Here you get the dialog of what’s happening, the plan, the history, and what all of that means.
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There’s no such thing as a one stop shop. Watch Duty, like this forum, is part of an ever-more robust toolkit that provides enhanced situational awareness of emergencies in a given area of concern.
Watch Duty aggregates and consolidates information that is (more than somewhat) vetted and (often at least semi) official based on live radio traffic and nearly live streamed dispatch audio, as well as camera feeds. Watch Duty’s listeners are vetted and may be off duty professional responders or radio enthusiasts, among other things.
Here you’ll find a lively mix of active, retired and prospective responders, dispatchers, meteorologists, cartographers, geologists, media professionals, political policy advisors and Subject Matter Experts from various other fields with a professional or personal interest in such things, as well as firefighter parents and spouses, nosy neighbors, blowhards, trolls, lurkers, and — shockingly — even a Monday Morning Quarterback or three. Some of these folks are more reliable and trustworthy than others, but everyone brings something to the table here.
While there may be some overlap in the content found here and on Watch Duty, I wouldn’t limit myself to one side or another.
In no particular order, you can get information from so many different sources (but be sure you’re not relying on ANY source to be your infallible go to) such as:
• The Wildfire Intel forums
• Watch Duty
• The ALERTCalifornia/ALERTWildfire camera systems
• Live incident radio traffic
• Broadcastify scanner feeds (with 30 sec-multi minute delays due to any number of bandwidth issues between the original transmission and the time you hear it)
• PulsePoint
• Agency Public Information Officers
• Agency social media pages
• Radio and TV coverage
• Crowdsourced social media pages (especially on Facebook and X/Twitter)
• Livestreams from journalists, whether professional or citizen)
• FlightAware/Flight Radar 24/ADS-B Exchange
• Your own social network of family members, friends, coworkers and neighbors
• Live webcams at local points of interest
• The CHP CAD site
• The CalTrans traffic camera system
• Weather sites/apps with live wind/lightning/radar info
• Aviation METAR reports
And so many others!
Each source listed above had pros and cons, of course — scratchy traffic, cameras down or blocked by condors, bandwidth limits being exceeded, bad or out of date information and out of control rumor mills, agency mission conflicts, Murphy ‘s Law… well, there’s a lot that can go sideways.
While this site skews heavily towards responders, it’s definitely a big ol’ box of chocolates and you’re bound to run into the occasional nut or two.
In any event, your own judgment, training and experience should be supplemented by the tools you’ve got, and don’t let the sea of information available to you vapor lock you with a bad case of analysis paralysis. Practice makes better, so by all means use the tools you like as much as possible — stay safe out there!
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As always, thank you all for your input! I think at this time I will just stay the course! This place has it’s issues but so does any other forum. That being said, in my opinion, there is way more positive than negative!
Let’s see what the rest of the season has for us?
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Great discussion, I first used this site for the They Said topics in the early 2000’s, and then it transitioned over to fire intel, and I for one am glad that it did because I think it nearly went away for good. I used it when I was in fire management and now that I am retired, I like to see what’s going on, it can be very entertaining, this other site has zero appeal to me. These real time applications are likely never used by in service first responders while getting busy, as an FMO I would have never ever stopped what I was doing on an IA or any other time to check out one of these sites, that would make me derelict in performing my duties, these sites are mainly used by folks that are bored because it’s a slow fire season or by old retired folk like me. I used to visit another site but now this is the one and only for me, i am a little biased. I truly feel that there are a bunch of very dedicated folks that visit this site and make it worth the time to visit…You all are great…at times it feels as if i know some of you…lol…oh I would definitely pay a small annual fee to ensure this site stays right where’s it’s at…just say the word.
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This site provides analysis, discussion of trends and resources within the context of the larger picture whether regionally, statewide, nationally or even world wide. If I want up to the minute intel on a particular fire, Watch Duty might have an edge. For everything else, this is the site for me. I pay a small fee to Watch Duty, I’d be happy to do so for this site which I spend way more time using.
The weather forecasting here is top of the line. I don’t pretend to actually learn anything from the analyses some of the folks here provide, but their long term discussions tend to be spot on.
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apples and oranges IMHO… and those of us on WD do like to keep track of which way a fire is moving, if the column is collapsing, etc we just don’t necessarily post because we have a different readership than here. I like having multiple tools in my toolbox including all the things alex mentioned above.
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I think it’s important to understand/acknowledge the audiences of both these forums and WatchDuty.
These forums have a strong sense of institutional knowledge in the (admittingly western US) fire industry. It’s a great mix of old guard, mid-lifers with kids starting high school, and young bucks who know everything and humorously challenge the old guard, but usually get schooled in the end.
WD came from an observation that incidents are now growing much faster than the agency PIO’s and Genasys and Code Red alerts can keep up with. (Don’t forget, are you in evac zone XY-2846 or JW-0284?) One glance at the community FB groups and you can’t dismiss the PTSD of citizens who hear a siren. There’s always the element of nosy-neighbor yes, but it’s obvious the majority just want a sense of ease (or situational awareness) brought to them. WD’s goal is simply to bring rapid situational awareness to the citizen, to allow them to make a better-informed decision on their next step (evacuate? Go home and prep the house? Call the family member or friend who is probably oblivious to the show outside a 1/4 mile away.)
What WD is doing to these forums (and many community facebook groups and social media “fire intel experts”) is taking the jump on initial attack alerting. The technology and the agency/organizational partnerships behind the scenes allows for a pretty fast post of a fire. A little scrutiny determines if it’s worthy of pinging the userbase or remains “silent” to show that they’re ‘here and listening, but it’s not an urgent situation in the moment.’ To give a sense of scale to the PTSD and community-demand of being notified, a recent watch duty app update now allows users to be notified even on “silent” incidents. If they can allow one citizen five more minutes to be aware and take appropriate action, then WD met their goal.
What WD won’t do to these forums is replace the institutional knowledge of the industry and all that comes from that; speculation on what the fire will do when it hits the ridge or the scar from 2021, fire weather analysis, or insight from someone who has climbed the same slope from the same ignition point chasing the line with the same poison oak in the same conditions 8 or 19 years earlier. WD also won’t have the jump on what IMT is being mobilized. 
What WD might even do is help divert the common citizen out of these spaces to let the pros have a “safe” unfettered space to let loose and speak their mind (nobody does that here.)
WD also does not replace any agency PIO message or local government evacuation notification. They strive to supplement those where they exist, and fill in the gap where lacking. There are county EM’s realizing WD has larger userbases in their county in one year than five+ years of pushing their own commercial solution, and in a format/user experience far more friendly to understand. WD certainly is enjoying being disruptive (yet supportive) in this space, because they know if that produces an equal or better product from agencies to the citizens, then the citizen wins, and mission accomplished.
If you know me, you know I have a few decades around these forums. I’ve been an intel provider for WD the last couple years (opinions are my own here) and after an initial heavy dose of scrutiny, I could not be more impressed with a solid group of people who cohesively support one goal, and that’s simply getting the initial message out to folks in a timely matter, in a format easy to digest, to allow them to ACT.
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I like the idea that it’s just us using this site, but as you said it’s wide open to whoever wants to visit, that’s just the way it is, I have seen some of us vent fairly well here to be sure…I am not a social media person but to suggest that WD would/could be used to make notifications to the public is maybe a little over zealous. I am assuming that this WD is mainly a Calif thing, heck for that matter fire intel is basically a calif thing…I enjoyed your comments very much norcalscan, very well thought out…Heck all you all had great comments…this what make this site worth the time…great topics such as this keep me interested…thanks…
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We need both: the immediate warning to start looking at available sources such as alertca, flight radar, etc. and the long term analysis. Together they provided invaluable information to users. (plus, I enjoy the expert views provided here.)
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nope… not overzealous. a very real possibility considering WD has the app in place and nobody else does. also not just a CA thing. we cover 11 states and have been achieving our goals quite well in several of those other than CA including recently WA, OR, AZ, MT. Definitely a different audience but for those of us who work in the background on both forums they are equally important.
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very well said!!! 
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Hi all… one of the Watch Duty founders here. My 0.02, there is no “VS.” Most of my thoughts are covered by what others here have said.
WD serves a particular set of needs in the total space and doesn’t fully try to replace any available tools. We sometimes replace a tool when considering a particular purpose or use case, but the goal is to improve on specific pain points.
One of the first concerns we ever confronted was that we were trying to replace Pulsepoint and that Pulsepoint was faster to notify. We aren’t explicitly trying to be “first to notify,” though we are trying to notify early when there is a strong probability that it may matter. WD doesn’t do anything except vegetation fire. We use Pulsepoint because it’s a beautiful resource, and we are thankful it exists! We would be ready to fight at any threat of it going away.
What we did replace concerning PulsePoint for many but not all residents was the desire to install PulsePoint only to ignore the most crucial feature it provides (notification on time-sensitive medical incidents - even if it isn’t the most frequently used feature, it is worth every dime) by configuring PulsePoint for vegetation fire only, and then proceed to jump out of their skin every time an incident dispatches. Not only was it often not productive towards getting the information they needed quickly during a serious incident, but that’s also a lot of warming/cooking fires, BBQs, “on-scene, can handle, cancel balance” for average folks to spend time trying to seek information about on FB pointlessly, and a lot of hours out of people’s lives when they could instead do their work, or enjoy their hike, meal, kid’s birthday, etc…
As for this forum… WD doesn’t do what you all do (though some of us do what you do right here with you), and we never will. Personally, when I’m trying to understand the bigger picture on larger fires (edit: and finer details!), outside of the rest of everything I’m looking at, I read here. That’s got little to do with WD directly, though indirectly, I would hope that WD reporters who better understand the big picture are made better at what they do.
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Help me understand what/how these applications work, is it an app that is loaded on your phone and every time there is an incident within your geo area you receive an alert of some kind. ie. wildfire or other emergency…how do you market this thing to the public…what is the fee…I have only been retired for four years now and things are changing fast…This would be a great resource for the ambulance chasers and scanner geeks…have you found that local EOC’s are subscribing to these apps, most progressive EOC’s do a great job of getting the word out ie reverse 911…having an app on your phone can be both great and maybe overwhelming…just another tool in the box…it would be great to see FEMA come up with something for local state and fed…that way it’s maybe a no charge resource…reverse 911 does not reach every one…very interesting…
What everyone else said…
In all seriousness all these apps/sites just compliment each other.
If you want/need some IA situational awareness it is a great tool for both the public and first responders.
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as for Watch Duty
yes it’s an app loaded on your phone
yes you get a notification on your phone if there’s a wildfire in your area (you can configure your notifications in a few different ways)
Watch Duty only posts regarding wildfires
basic Watch Duty is free but accepts donations and now offers a yearly membership that includes enhanced features such as firefighting aircraft tracking
yes, firefighters, commanders, OES, red cross, PG&E, etc are using Watch Duty.
in some areas Watch Duty has a larger reach than reverse 911, nixel, genasys-protect, etc and can be a lot faster with less red tape.
This might be like opening Pandoras box and possibly should have it’s own thread but I’m curious in an IA context what Watch Duty could do to make it even more user friendly for those of you who work in the industry.
I mostly use this forum, as people whom have put boots on a particular atch of land can give great intel. This season I have to use Watch Duty to get information on the South Fork Complex (becuasse my son is on it). I traced back and an initial fire was here, but once it went ot complex, no thread was started; and no upates to the original. It happens. We ar edependent upon somene interested in an area posting. Most of the time it works great! Not complaining, at all. Like most of the comments, two different platforms = two different missions.
This site and wildlandfire.com before it have always relied on a few key individuals who have been glued to their scanners and doggedly covered large areas. Over time, a lot of these people have moved on, and each time, it has opened holes in coverage.
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thanks for responding…
I use them both but I miss Abercrombie…
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