In the last autumn, a relatively unknown use of the Watch Duty Open Open AI, Dictoc and Instagram became the most downloaded iPhone app. But the Watch duty is not the beginning of a venture support. After my own experience, fighting to find useful information when a nearby fire threatened my home, is an app that I founded as a non -profit company to monitor and share information about wildfire.
When the bridge, tax and airport fire simultaneously torn through South California in September 2024, about 420,000 people downloaded the app in a week and fired us in the rankings. In the beginning of January, the number rose to 2 million when the Los Angeles was surrounded by fire on all sides and communities, such as the Pacific Pacific Policy and Altadeena.
But look at the success of the duty as a lifeline for Americans in danger. This is actually a reflection of a confusing failure: our government has not properly warned people about disasters, with life and death consequences.
The failure begins with how often governments communicate disaster information. Traditionally, emergency managers who send alerts on behalf of state and local governments limit their communications. There are good reasons for this. Public officials want to communicate with urgency. Sending non -urgent information can lead to fatigue, frustration and neglected warnings. They do not want people to try to get out if the roads are panicked in advance and the roads are not entirely necessary.
But this means that emergency managers only publish alerts once a wildfire is installed – go through your community or on its way. At that time, you were married to smoke, received text from neighboring countries, or a firefighter may have heard upwards. The panic is already set.
What we invented through many years of studies and user interviews is that in an emergency, information fatigue will never occur. In crises, additional information is better than always lower. Stopping with information develops confusion and misinformation, which is a lesson learned in the early months of the Kovit -19 infection.
Rather than sending a warning – “It's time to go!” – Look at duty issues, rely on verified statements from the first respondents on the ground and tell our users about the fire from its first flame to its last Embar. This includes information on how quickly the fire spreads, which way it goes, and the burning of the past. Before the official warning exit – sometimes half an hour before – people who get these awareness will know – they must pack their bags, protect the pets and escape. Then, when people knock their door from the official discharge on their phones or the emergency workers, they are ready to go. Being a reverse-the first respondents, the first respondents, the pets and even the livestock save the lives.
The amount of official alerts is not the same issue. Even quality things. Most alerts do not even have the basic considerations of the user's experience. Often they are written in all caps without proper grammar, punctuation or line spaces that make it easy to read. The worst thing is that they do not always add maps, so people remain to guess the right place of fire and the direction it goes. Confused alerts – such as maps and clear spatial information – are dangerous. During the camp fire at Paradise in California in 2018, the distracted residents actually fled the path of fire from relatively safe zones.
Finally, the environment is important. Emergency managers record their alerts on social media. But immediately, those posts are flooded with ideas and reusables, they are polluting, incorrectly portrayed and trying to discredit the warning, Stimulates false information inadvertently. As long as technical sites are cleaning this kind of behavior – something They are not interested in doing these days – Emergency warnings are not on social media. Emergency managers must limit their communications to closed sites Wireless emergency alarm system It sends messages directly to our phones. Third-party sites such as government websites, formal news sites, television and radio networks and Watch Duty are interested in providing more and more interesting information and not chasing clicks.
California's wildfire agency warned that the Call Fire, Citizens duty and similar applications should be viewed “Should not be considered as sources of official information. “The agency and some others do not provide updated data to see the duty of sharing with users. People want to visit their website.
Honestly, we will do the same. Our goal for Watch duty is not the development of hypercale; It is inappropriate. Public emergency agencies need to follow these excellent procedures, trust those who have more information than less information, and create a forced, effective real -time visual awakening so that there is no need for a watch duty. Until that day, everywhere emergency managers should provide important information and embrace the available sites that will save lives.
John Mills is the founder and chief executive of the watch duty.