In January 2025, my younger son, a sophomore, was at UCLA when the SoCal fires started. As one fire after another started, I become more and more worried about his safety. By the time the Palisades and Eaton fires had exploded out of control, with more fires (Hurst and others) already burning N of UCLA, the only evacuation road out of the university was driving SE. Of course, as a sophomore he could not have a car on campus. I couldn’t help thinking, a good part of the day, about the difficulty of evacuating 45,000 students if that became necessary.
So I starting monitoring these fires every half an hour—but information was very poor, and I could not find good sources for real time progress. Then I remembered a briefing by Berkeley Fire Department, where the Chief who presented had discussed an wildfire-monitoring app, Watch Duty. I immediately downloaded it. This is what I got:
Source: Watch Duty screenshot, courtesy Mashable
I had just discovered the start of the Sunset Fire, which could, if it expanded quickly W or SW, cut the last evacuation road from UCLA. I called my son that very moment and try to convince him to leave—thankfully, his roommate decided to go, otherwise he would not have accepted… A few minutes later, the university canceled classes. The two roommates were already on their way to San Diego.
I monitored the wildfires on Watch Duty for the rest of the week.
Watch Duty is an app that you download on your smartphone. It is maintained by a nonprofit organization, largely with retired firefighters and rangers, who continually validate the information generated by the app and its sources. It is the best live information that exists today for the 22 Western states where Watch Duty is live.
BFD staff recommends that we all have Watch Duty loaded and available on our phones. Download Watch Duty on your phone today, and don’t forget to read Berkeley Fire Weather and Evacuation Page.