THE RECENT SPREAD of devastating wildfires in Los Angeles has underscored the importance of Watch Duty, the wildfire mapping app that provides early warning of fires and tracks their spread.
And it is also casting a spotlight on the work of two volunteers, Danilla Sands of Mendocino County and Sara Paul of Sonoma County, both of whom play critical roles in ensuring the app has the latest fire information.
Both women have been with Watch Duty since its early days in 2020. But both were involved in fire safety well before the app launch, having been motivated by a shortage of information about wildfires happening around them.
For Sands, it was the 2015 Valley Fire in Lake County, and for Paul it was the 2017 Tubbs fire that burned in parts of Napa, Sonoma and Lake counties. In response to those conflagrations, both women independently started Facebook groups to alert and inform communities about fires happening around them.
“When the Tubbs fire was sweeping through Santa Rosa, there wasn’t very much information available about it,” said Paul, who lives in Monte Rio. “In fact, I learned about the fire itself from a friend’s Facebook post.” That friend ultimately lost their house.
Paul went on to become a founding member and reporter for the app. Her involvement dates to 2020 when John Clark Mills, whom she describes as a gentleman who was evacuated from Healdsburg during the Walbridge fire, approached her and a handful of others on social media because they seemed to have better fire information than the official sources.
“John figured out how to get everything coded and programmed. And then those of us that were the first supporters started practicing,” Paul said. “And then, you know, we were off to the races on Aug. 11, 2021, just at that point reporting on Lake, Napa and Sonoma counties. A month later, we expanded to include Mendocino County.
“I help a lot with our recruiting and interviewing and training of new personnel,” Paul added.
Becoming a volunteer reporter
One of those she helped bring on board was Sands, who remembers hearing about the app from a reporter in Lake County. People began asking her if she would volunteer to report from Mendocino County. Her training as an app reporter was provided by Paul.
There’s a process to becoming an app reporter, including a background check. Paul explained that the training process tests how the person shares information while being under pressure, all while keeping accuracy the main priority. The team has a staging app where they can practice and test everything.
“And so everyone that wants to become a reporter spends a lot of time practicing in that staging environment to make sure that they’re really comfortable and they understand what we publish and what we don’t publish,” Paul said.
“I tend to try and find myself in situations or place myself in situations where I can help people. So I guess in some ways it doesn’t surprise me that I am, you know, a part of this,” she said about where her need to inform has taken her.
For both of these highly committed women, Watch Duty is only one part of the service work they do.
Paul is a certified wildfire mitigation specialist in vegetation management and home-hardening. She also serves on the Monte Rio Fire Protection District board, and she manages Sonoma County Fire Updates. And with all this, fire remains a part time gig; during the rest of her time, she works helping people with aqua therapy and aquatic rehabilitation.
Sands manages “Mendocino Action News – Fire, Traffic and Other Emergencies” on Facebook.
Between the two women, more than 40,000 people receive information in both counties. Sands licensed her page as an online newspaper.
Sands, who resides in Redwood Valley but works all over, is mainly in Ukiah for work, where she runs United Disaster Relief of Northern California, a disaster resource center where people can access resources and referrals, know the deadlines on grants, connect with other fire survivors and more. The center is going on its eighth year.
“I tend to try and find myself in situations or place myself in situations where I can help people. So I guess in some ways it doesn’t surprise me that I am, you know, a part of this.”
Sara Paul, Watch Duty founding member and reporter
“I just had a passion to help people that were impacted at no fault of their own,” Sands said.
“These people didn’t ask for their home to be burned. They didn’t ask for all their livelihood to be gone, for their whole world to be uprooted and changed. And the average donation center closes in like two weeks, maybe two months. But these people are still living in our cars or a trailer or their mother’s house or a hotel,” she said.
For someone like her, helping an elderly woman to navigate a website to apply for funding, for example, is important. Hence her motivation for her volunteer work.
Following forged from flame
The recent fires in Los Angeles have only served to raise Watch Duty’s profile, reinforcing how important it is to have volunteers who can provide the information. Although she primarily reports from Sonoma and Mendocino counties, Paul did a vast amount of work helping cover the Palisades fire, giving more than 50 hours of her time a week.
In her Facebook page, she shares information on how to pack a go bag or how to organize the refrigerator before power shut off.
“I think it comes from my own desire to have as much information available for me and then being able to share that so that people have the situational awareness to make the right decisions for themselves,” Paul said.
“(Government agencies) have to go through this pyramid of people or this chain of command. That 30 minutes is critical. You may have more time to get your animals, more time to get your photo albums, wake up your family members, and get in your vehicles.”
Danilla Sands, Watch Duty volunteer
And Paul emphasized this app is a community effort, with volunteer engineers and reporters making it work for anyone who needs it.
“The one thing I would say is important is that no matter how much technology we have, Watch Duty is fueled by people with passion,” Paul said. “And that’s something that is absolutely critical to our success. Without the people who are committing themselves to this organization and committing and volunteering all their time, we wouldn’t be where we are.”
Sands emphasized how the power of community allows Watch Duty to report instantly what other alert systems might take 30 more minutes to say. She notes that government websites often have to navigate bureaucratic channels before releasing information.
“They can’t just release something. They have to go through this pyramid of people or this chain of command,” she said. “That 30 minutes is critical. You may have more time to get your animals, more time to get your photo albums, wake up your family members, and get in your vehicles.”
Sands encouraged people to donate and support the app.
“I like to give people hope,” Sands said of her work. “I like that there is a group of community-minded folks that want to help save lives.
“It is rewarding. It’s hopeful. It makes me feel grateful for what I have.”
This story originally appeared in The Mendocino Voice.
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