How we built Watch Duty, the lifesaving wildfire alert app - John Mills

You're listening to ted talks daily where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host Elish Huge. After watching a series of wildfires rage around his home in northern California in 2019, civic Tech pioneer John Mills had a simple question. Where is the information that could help us better prepare for these disasters? In his talk he shares the story behind watch duty, the real time wildfire alert APP he developed to provide residents and first responders with the lifesaving heads up they need to escape danger. His story proves that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can indeed change the world. I live in LA and during the eaton and palisades fires, I was among the hundreds of thousands who use this APP to get critical information. So this work directly touched my life. I sat down with John shortly after ted next to go beyond his talk and learn more about this sprint to create watch duty and what's on the horizon. Stick around after his talk for our conversation.

您正在收听的是每日TED演讲，我们每天都会为您带来激发您好奇心的新想法。我是主持人伊莉丝·休格。2019年，加州北部的一系列野火肆虐，公民科技先驱约翰·米尔斯（John Mills）目睹了这一切，他心中萌生了一个简单的问题：哪里能获取信息，帮助我们更好地应对这些灾难？在他的演讲中，他分享了“守望者”（Watch Duty）背后的故事。这是一款他开发的实时野火警报应用程序，旨在为居民和应急人员提供逃离危险所需的救生预警。他的故事证明，一小群有思想、有奉献精神的公民确实可以改变世界。我住在洛杉矶，在伊顿山火和帕利塞兹山火期间，我和数十万用户一样，使用这款应用程序获取关键信息。因此，这项工作与我的生活息息相关。TEDNext结束后不久，我与约翰进行了一次深入的对话，进一步了解他创建“守望者”的历程以及未来的发展方向。演讲结束后，请继续收听我们的对话。

Just one month after moving off the grid in northern California, I was alerted by the sound. I went outside to investigate, to find this helicopter circling. That's when I realized my neighbor's ranch had a wildfire running through it.

在加利福尼亚州北部脱离电网仅一个月后，我就听到了声音。我走到外面调查，发现这架直升机在盘旋。就在那时，我意识到我邻居的牧场有一场野火正在蔓延。

The pilot started waving at me, probably to evacuate, but I stupidly grabbed my garden hose and started watering down my house instead. Shortly after that, a huge air tanker flew directly over my head. I watched the Bombay doors open as the retardant went flying. And then the airspace cleared, and there was nothing left but silence.

飞行员开始向我挥手，可能是为了疏散，但我愚蠢地抓起花园里的水管，开始给房子浇水。不久之后，一架巨大的空中加油机从我头顶飞过。我看着孟买的门开着，阻燃剂飞了起来。然后空域清空了，除了寂静什么也没有留下。

There was nothing on the news.

新闻上什么也没有。

There was no alert on my phone.

我的手机上没有警报。

And that's when it hit me, like 25,000 pounds of retardant raining down on me. I was out here alone on my own, with only two choices. As you probably guessed, I wasn't invited here today to tell you the story about how I quit.

就在那时，它袭击了我，就像25000磅的阻燃剂倾泻在我身上。我独自一人在这里，只有两个选择。正如你可能猜到的那样。我今天没被邀请来这里给你讲关于我是如何辞职的故事。

So, like the boy scout that I was, I began preparing for the next inevitable wildfire. I started hardening my home, clearing my land and built in sprinkler systems. But just a few months later, a dry lightning storm passed over northern California and lit the world on fire.

所以，就像我那个童子军一样，我开始为下一场不可避免的野火做准备。我开始加固我的房子，清理我的土地，以及内置的喷水灭火系统。但就在几个月后，一场干燥的雷暴席卷了加利福尼亚州北部，点燃了整个世界。

I was forced to evacuate with little information, only this time I went down the Internet rabbit hole and I found ham radio operators who were listening to first responder radio communications and putting that information out on Facebook and Twitter.

我被迫在几乎没有信息的情况下撤离，只是这次我走进了互联网的兔子洞，发现业余无线电操作员正在收听第一响应者的无线电通信，并将这些信息发布在脸书和推特上。

It is 100% in alignment with the wind. That the potential for 200 per acre in the next 20 minutes.

它与风向完全一致。这意味着未来20分钟内，每英亩有可能达到200。

This is how firefighters communicate, and it's the closest you can get to any real time source of information.

这就是消防员的沟通方式，也是你能得到的最接近任何实时信息源的方式。

So these radio operators, many of whom are active as first responders, listen to radio sometimes eighteen hours a day during wildfires and have become the heroes of their community because they're disseminating information before the officials. Now, they didn't ask for permission to do this, but they knew that their lives and their communities were at risk.

这些无线电操作员，其中许多人同时也是一线反应人员，在山火肆虐期间，有时一天要收听18个小时的广播，他们因为抢在官方人员之前传播信息，成为了社区的英雄。他们这样做并没有事先申请许可，但他们深知自己的生命和社区都面临着危险。

While they offer an amazing service to the world, social media isn't the right platform for this. Not only are they hard to find, they work independently and it doesn't send alerts to your phone. Social media is really made for cats and memes. Fortunately, my house was spared from that fire, and when I returned home, I joined those radio operators, began wild land fire training, going on ride along and immersed myself in wildfire. But I kept asking myself, where is the information?

虽然它们为世界提供了一项了不起的服务，但社交媒体并不是合适的平台。它们不仅难以查找，而且各自独*运行，也不会向你的手机发送警报。社交媒体其实更适合猫咪和表情包。幸运的是，我的房子在那场火灾中幸免于难。回家后，我加入了无线电操作员的行列，开始接受野外火灾培训，跟随消防员出警，全身心地投入到野火应对工作中。但我一直在问自己：信息在哪里？

And that's when it hit me and I couldn't unsee it. I realized that the government wasn't going to be able to solve this problem, but those radio operators were. If I could just bang them all together, we could build our own emergency alerting system.

就在那时，我突然意识到，政府解决不了这个问题，但那些无线电操作员可以。如果我能把他们聚集起来，我们就能建立自己的紧急警报系统。

So I recruited many of those radio operators, found volunteer engineers from silicon valley. We acquired donated servers and embarked on an eighty day sprint to build the Nonprofit emergency alerting APP that we called watch duty.

于是我招募了许多无线电操作员，从硅谷找到了志愿工程师。我们获得了捐赠的服务器，并开始了为期八十天的冲刺，开发出了我们称之为“值班”的非营利紧急警报应用程序。

Just a few days later, after launch, a wind driven fire blew through a mobile home park in lake county, incinerating everything in its path. Our alerts beat the government by 41 minutes, giving thousands of residents critical moments to evacuate when every second counts.

就在几天后，发射后，一场由风驱动的大火席卷了湖县的一个移动房屋公园，烧毁了沿途的一切。我们的警报比政府快了41分钟，让数千名居民在分秒必争的时刻紧急疏散。

Unfortunately, the officials were not pleased as it was their job to do this. Some of them threatened us. Some of them told us it was illegal. Spoiler, it isn't. The status quo has no interest in changing.

不幸的是，官员们对此很不高兴，因为这是他们的职责。有些人威胁我们，有些人说我们这样做违法。剧透一下，这并不违法。现状根本没有改变的意愿。

But the residents, well, they were ecstatic. We were receiving love letters from across the region about how we'd saved their homes, their livestock, their ranches and their community. That's when we realized we were about to change the world, if we just kept going.

但居民们，嗯，他们欣喜若狂。我们收到了来自该地区各地的情书，讲述我们如何拯救他们的家园、牲畜、牧场和社区。就在那时，我们意识到，如果我们继续前进，我们即将改变世界。

So with the wind at our backs, we recruited hundreds of radio operators, raised millions from philanthropists and locals, and expanded exponentially year after year across the American west. And despite the government's protests, even they started to use it.

因此，在我们的支持下，我们招募了数百名无线电操作员，从慈善家和当地人那里筹集了数百万美元，并在美国西部逐年呈指数级增长。尽管政府提出抗议，但就连他们也开始使用它。

Firefighters, tanker pilots and dozer operators all started utilizing it, and governors and mayors to tell the constituents to download it. We had broken through.

消防员、加油机飞行员和推土机操作员都开始使用它，州长和市长也告诉选民下载它。我们已经突破了。

And then LA’s on fire. All the alert systems crashed and the world turned to us, including the emergency managers themselves. In just a few days, two and a half million people, one quarter of all of LA county download watch duty to find safety during their worst wildfire in history.

随后，一团火光燃起。所有的警报系统都崩溃了，世界都转向了我们，包括应急管理人员自己。在短短几天内，250万人，即拉县四分之一的人口，在历史上最严重的野火中寻找安全。

And this is just the beginning, because we're expanding to all natural disasters, because people are dying needlessly without any warning.

这只是一个开始，因为我们正在扩大到所有自然灾害，因为人们在没有任何预警的情况下不必要地死亡。

We are building the alerting system that we need and frankly deserve.

我们正在建立我们需要的、坦率地说是应得的警报系统。

We are proof that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.

我们证明，一小群有思想、有奉献精神的公民可以改变世界。

Mr. Rogers would tell you to look for the helpers, but I'm going to tell you that once you find them, prepare for battle, because the status quo will not change without a fight. Do not ask for permission. Proceed until apprehended. Thank you.

罗杰斯先生会告诉你寻找帮手，但我要告诉你，一旦你找到了他们，就要做好战斗准备，因为现状不会不战而变。不要请求许可。继续前进，直至被捕。谢谢。

And now, here's the conversation I had with John Mills after he gave his talk on the ted net stage.

现在，这是我和约翰·米尔斯在单调乏味的舞台上演讲后的对话。

John, thanks for sitting down with me.

约翰，谢谢你和我坐在一起。

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Congratulations on the talk. How are you feeling now that it's all behind you? Relieved and exc*ted, I should say. Yeah. Can you explain how watch duty works in a bit more detail? Just the mechanics of it.

谢谢邀请，非常感谢。祝贺你演讲成功。现在一切都结束了，感觉如何？应该说是如释重负又兴奋。是啊。你能再详细解释一下watch duty是怎么回事吗？就讲讲具体操作流程。

I'd be happy to do that. So it's really actually quite an analog process. You know, we have a mobile APP that you can download on ios and android it's also at an APP dot Washtd dot org, but that's just how you hear us, for lack of a better term, right? So what is happening behind the scenes are we have about 25 paid staff and 300 volunteers who are listening to fire service radio 24 hours a day.

我很乐意这么做。所以这其实是一个相当传统的流程 。你知道，我们有一个手机应用，可以在iOS和安卓系统上下载，网址是app.washtd.org，但你只能通过这个应用收听我们的广播，暂且这么说吧。幕后运作的情况是，我们有大约25名带薪员工和300名志愿者，他们每天24小时都在收听消防广播。

And so what happens is that we're scanning and scraping and mining the Internet to find sources of, hey, there's a vegetation fire here, there's a California highway patrol dispatch for a vegetation fire. There's something on the news, there's something from a government website and that triggers us to start listening. And then as we listen, we are collaborating in real time in slack. So what will happen is that veg fire gets called out in LA county for example, it looks at the LA county channel and says this Latin long, there's a vegetation fire, we turn our radios on, we start listening and collaborating in real time and as that event evolves, we start sending out notifications to you via the mobile application and that's really it.

所以，我们通过扫描、抓取和挖掘互联网上的信息来寻找线索，比如“嘿，这里发生了植被火灾”、“加州公路巡警发布了植被火灾的调度信息”、“新闻报道”、“政府网站上的信息”等等，这些信息都会触发我们开始监听。然后，在监听的过程中，我们会通过 Slack 进行实时协作。例如，如果洛杉矶县发布了植被火灾的警报，我们会查看洛杉矶县的频道，看到一条拉丁文的警报：“发生植被火灾”，然后我们打开收音机，开始实时监听和协作。随着事件的发展，我们会通过移动应用程序向您发送通知，就是这样。

Your talk focuses on the tension that exists between citizen back technology like yours and the needs that it addresses versus existing institutional inertia or government systems that can be very slow to update or slow to innovate. Why would you say what is your explanation for why citizen Tech is often outpacing government response systems?

您的演讲重点在于公民*导型技术（例如您的技术）及其所满足的需求与现有制度惯性或政府系统更新或创新速度缓慢之间的矛盾。您认为公民技术为何常常超越政府响应系统？

It’s not about the Tech. It's about the people, right? So we don't have these operating procedures that take us a long time to get an alert out, right? The palisades fire we had out two minutes after we saw it on the camera. We saw the veg fire tone out. Sorry. That's firefighter terms. The firefighters get toned out. It's like a page, essentially. And then we saw in the wildfire cameras as a smoke column and we knew immediately this was going to be catastrophic and we start going.

关键不在于技术，而在于人，对吧？所以我们没有那种需要很长时间才能发出警报的操作流程，对吧？帕利塞兹山火，我们在监控录像中看到后两分钟就扑灭了。我们看到维格山火发出警报。抱歉，这是消防员的术语。消防员会收到警报。基本上就像收到一则消息一样。然后我们在野火监控录像中看到一股烟柱，我们立刻意识到这将是一场灾难，然后我们就开始行动。

Right? and so software isn't going to save us. I'm kind of like an anti Tech techie, there's Tech that needs to exist to actually help humanity and it's only a tool for us to talk to the world, right? As I mentioned in my ted talk, when I experienced fires, I was on Facebook and Twitter listening to radio operators use whatever they could to broadcast to the world. So what I created, I mean, people say it's a Tech product, but like, I really look at it as a service. It's just a different form of media that is free and devoid of likes and clicks and nonsense. And so it's really about our operating procedures and how we can move so nimbly and that's what the government, in my opinion needs to unwind.

对吧？所以软件救不了我们。我有点像个反科技的科技迷，有些科技的存在是为了真正帮助人类，它只是我们与世界沟通的工具，对吧？就像我在TED演讲里提到的，我经历火灾的时候，在Facebook和Twitter上听着无线电操作员用尽一切办法向世界广播。所以我创造的东西，我的意思是，人们说它是科技产品，但我真的把它看作是一种服务。它只是一种不同的媒体形式，免费，没有点赞、点击和那些无意义的东西。所以它真正关乎的是我们的操作流程，以及我们如何才能如此灵活地行动，而这正是我认为政府需要放松的地方。

They need to remove the red tape and use the products that they have in a better way, because Tech alone will not save them.

他们需要取消繁文缛节，以更好的方式使用他们拥有的产品，因为技术本身救不了他们。

I remember, there was this period of time, maybe like a week in which LA county was sending all these evacuation orders, but erroneously.

记住，有一段时间，也许是一周，洛杉矶县发出了所有这些疏散命令，但都是错误的。

Three of them, yes.

其中三个，是的。

Yes, OK. So it was three erroneous evacuation alerts that went out just as much of LA county was still on fire. What is the kind of relationship between the alerts that we're getting on our phone from government sources and then the APP that we can go to to see the progress of fires in various neighborhoods?

是的，好的。就在洛杉矶县大部分地区仍处于火灾状态时，三个错误的疏散警报发出了。我们从政府来源通过手机收到的警报与我们可以查看各个社区火灾进展的APP之间有什么关系？

There is no direct link other than we get those messages too. So when we saw that happen we started to get 100,000 requests a second, which is twice Wikipedia, and we have four engineers who are staying up around the clock when LA was melting down and so we saw the traffic spike and we're like, oh my god, what happened? And then of course, our alerting tool picked that up and said, oh, no, this looks like erroneous information. That is completely useless. And it was a failure. Unfortunately, on the government's part. I'm not going to get into why that happened. They're trying their best. They don't have the right software. There aren't necessarily the right type of techies who are trying to help this problem.

除了我们也收到那些消息之外，没有其他直接联系。所以当我们看到这种情况发生时，我们开始收到每秒 10 万次的请求，是维基百科的两倍。当时洛杉矶网络瘫痪，我们有四名工程师 24 小时值班，所以我们看到流量激增，当时我们都惊呆了，心想：天哪，发生了什么？然后，我们的警报工具当然也检测到了，并提示：哦，不，这看起来像是错误信息。这完全没用。这是政府的失误。不幸的是，我不想深究原因。他们已经尽力了。他们没有合适的软件。也不一定有合适的技术人员来解决这个问题。

And so this just keeps happening over and over and over again. For us, that doesn't happen because of how we architected and built our system for these types of high availability load problems that happen, and then there's humans in the loop who are constantly monitoring and maintaining how this operates and so it's not really like a fired forget situation.

所以这种情况不断反复发生。对我们来说，这种情况不会发生，因为我们构建的系统架构能够应对这类高可用性负载问题，而且还有人员持续监控和维护系统的运行，所以这并不是那种“启动后就不管”的情况。

Yeah, so that leads to my follow up question, which is how you were able to fact check yourselves since the sourcing isn't being checked by the official government bodies or agencies in the moment? Is it sort of just built into the system because there are so many humans involved, such that there can't be kind of just one erroneous software error or an alert that went out because of one misjudgment that then goes out to everyone? How do you keep a system of checks and balances within what is such an important source of information for people?

是的，这就引出了我的后续问题，既然官方政府机构目前没有对信息来源进行核查，你们是如何进行事实核查的呢？是不是因为涉及的人员众多，所以系统本身就具备一定的核查机制，以避免出现某个软件错误或因某个人判断失误而发出的警报波及所有人的情况？对于这样一个对公众如此重要的信息来源，你们是如何维持这种制衡机制的呢？

Well, two things, one is, there's a whole class of people called a public information officer. It's PIO for short. Every local jurisdiction has one or several. The sheriff will have one, the office of emergency services will have one, and many of our staff have more PIO certifications than some of the Pios who fight us. So that's something that it's important we not only do their training, we have our own training on top of it. Fifteen of our staff are paid radio operators and dispatchers. So we are, frankly, extraordinarily certified to do this work.

嗯，有两件事。第一，有一类人叫做公共信息官（PIO）。每个地方政府辖区都有一名或几名公共信息官。警长办公室会有一个，紧急服务办公室也会有一个，而且我们很多员工的公共信息官资格认证比一些和我们作对的公共信息官还要多。所以，我们不仅要接受他们的培训，还要接受我们自己的培训，这一点非常重要。我们有15名员工是带薪的无线电操作员和调度员。坦白说，我们在这项工作方面拥有非常丰富的经验和资质。

And then the final thing is, we are real time fact checking, right? That's what happens. And so as the event is unfolding, we are checking each other's work as this goes on. So a great example of this is like some radio transmissions are scratchy or not ideal and we'll be talking in slack. We record everything as well, so if we ever have to go to court or back up what we've done, we record everything. every inch of radio traffic, every screen capture, every recording is recorded and it has come in handy many time.

最后一点是，我们会进行实时事实核查，对吧？就是这样。所以，随着事件的进展，我们会互相核对彼此的工作。举个例子，比如有些无线电通讯信号不好或者不太稳定，我们就会在Slack上讨论。我们还会录制所有内容，这样如果以后需要上法庭或者需要证明我们所做的工作，所有记录都一清二楚。每一条无线电通讯记录、每一次屏幕截图、每一段录音都会被保存下来，而且这些记录在很多情况下都派上了用场。

So what is happening is that there are times that we can hear something. Either the incident commander will say fifteen acres, but it sounded like five and so we'll be like, we can't decipher that. We're going to sit on the information and not say anything, right, which I know blows people's minds when you hear that. But we're sending so many updates like the palisades fire, the eaten fire, I mean, we sent, I think, a third of a billion notifications in like a week. It was nuts. And so we're not hasty. We're like we'd rather wait five more minutes till the next radio transmission than just jump the gun.

所以现在的情况是，有时候我们能听到一些信息。比如，现场指挥官会说过15英亩，但听起来像5英亩，所以我们就听不清楚。我们会暂时搁置这些信息，什么也不说，我知道大家听到这话会觉得不可思议。但是我们发送了大量的更新信息，比如帕利塞兹山火、伊顿山火等等，我的意思是，我们一周内就发送了大约3亿条通知。简直太疯狂了。所以我们不会操之过急。我们宁愿再等五分钟，等到下一次无线电通讯，也不愿贸然行动。

Fact checking is just part of our standard operating procedures and it's really who we are at our core. We have an expression that and it took us a long time. We're four years old now, but trust is gained in drops and lost in buckets. Right. And so if we ruin that trust and everything we've built, everything goes downhill and we cannot erode trust. Yeah.

事实核查是我们标准操作流程的一部分，也是我们企业的核心价值观。我们一直秉持着这样的理念，虽然花了很长时间才建立起来——我们成立至今已有四年了——但信任是一点一滴积累起来的，失去却会造成巨大损失。没错。所以，如果我们破坏了这份信任，毁掉了我们辛辛苦苦建立的一切，一切都会急转直下，而我们绝不能动摇信任。是的。

You mentioned in your talk also that the government wasn't pleased with Watch duty at first or in the first couple of years, but by the time the eaton and palisades fires broke out earlier in 2025, government officials were widely using the APP and widely citing the APP. What do you think helped people get over the hump?

您在演讲中也提到，政府最初几年对值班制度并不满意，但到了2025年初伊顿山火和帕利塞兹山火爆发时，政府官员已经广泛使用并广泛引用了APP。您认为是什么帮助人们克服了这一困难？

Well, I think trust is really the important part, right? We're outsiders to this world, even though many of us have been firefighters and first responders and dispatchers and whatever. We're not controlled by the government. So that I think causes struggles, obviously, and then look like very clearly like this is disruptive to their way of life. And so while I feel for those people, I feel for my wild land neighbors and community who have gone through multiple fires with almost no information and I don't really have much tolerance for it. We need to do better as a people to survive as a community.

我觉得信任才是最重要的，对吧？我们是这个世界的局外人，即便我们当中很多人都当过消防员、急救员、调度员等等。我们不受政府控制。所以，我认为这显然会造成一些困难，而且很明显，这场火灾会扰乱他们的生活方式。因此，我同情那些人，也同情我的荒野邻居和社区，他们经历了多次火灾，却几乎得不到任何信息，我对这种情况真的很难容忍。为了社区的生存，我们需要做得更好。

And so again, I feel for them, but they need to adapt and overcome. And I hope that they can change their bureaucratic processes to adapt and frankly, put us out of business. I'm a nonprofit, right? I don't have to be here. I'm here because I choose to be here. So we are here to be of service and that's what's important to remember.

所以，我再次表示同情，但他们需要适应并克服困难。我希望他们能够改变官僚作风，坦白说，这样一来，我们就没法继续运营下去了。我是一家非营利组织，对吧？我并非必须待在这里。我在这里是因为我选择留在这里。我们在这里是为了服务他人，这一点至关重要。

And obviously, it feels, especially as somebody who lives in los Angeles and really lived and breathed a climate shock this year and was able to benefit from the service of watch duty. It seems like we all need as much help as we can get. So what is your hope for the partnership between nonprofits like yours and existing institutions?

显然，这种感受尤为强烈，特别是对于像我这样生活在洛杉矶，今年真切感受到气候冲击，并受益于值班服务的人来说。我们似乎都需要尽可能多的帮助。那么，您对像你们这样的非营利组织与现有机构之间的合作有何期待？

Yeah, I mean, look, it's happening more and more. We partner with a lot of organizations, believe it or not. Some governments are still not happy about us operating, but many of them give us direct information. We now have many other PIOs who are going on Facebook live and put that information out so that we can republish it for them. They are seeing us as another media channel to reach their audience. And so it's just going to take time.

是的，你看，这种情况越来越普遍了。信不信由你，我们和很多机构都有合作。有些政府仍然不乐意我们开展工作，但很多政府会直接向我们提供信息。现在还有很多公共信息官在Facebook上直播，发布信息，然后我们再帮他们转发。他们把我们视为接触受众的另一个媒体渠道。所以，这需要时间。

But let's talk about history for a second, because I, as a technologist, try and study the past to see the future. And so when social media first came out, which was whatever 2008, let’s recall it a little earlier, but, you know, it started to really catch on to the mainstream and you know, 789 wasn't until like, I think 2012 or 2013 that these PIOs actually started to adopt Facebook and Twitter. They resist it horribly. And it's interesting when I talk with PIOs who've been here a long time, they remember the resistance they remember what was happening, but their civilians were getting upset and they were spreading misinformation to each other on social media. So they had to get involved in the narrative that took, you know, five, six, seven years for that to happen. I'm only four years old, so I understand the resistance. I just don't think they see where we are in the timeline.

但我们不妨先聊聊历史，因为我作为一名技术人员，总是试图通过研究过去来展望未来。社交媒体最初出现的时候，大概是2008年，我们不妨再往前追溯一下，总之，它开始真正被主流社会接受。你知道，直到2012年或2013年，这些公共信息官员（PIO）才开始真正使用Facebook和Twitter。他们一开始非常抵触。有趣的是，当我与一些资历较深的公共信息官员交谈时，他们仍然记得当时的抵触情绪，记得当时发生的事情，但他们的下属民众开始感到不满，并在社交媒体上互相传播错误信息。所以他们不得不参与到这场舆论风暴中来，而这花了五六年甚至七年的时间。我只有四岁，所以我理解他们的抵触情绪。我只是觉得他们没有意识到我们现在所处的时间节点。

As you're describing this APP, it sounds like, it's really enabling us citizens to get to the primary source, break down the barriers and the various layers of bureaucracy between what's happening wherever the burn zones are and then us needing to know the information, especially those of us who might need to be evacuated or be close to it.

根据你对这款应用程序的描述，它似乎真的能够帮助我们公民获取第一手信息，打破各种障碍和官僚机构的层层阻隔，让我们能够及时了解火灾现场的情况，特别是那些可能需要撤离或身处火灾附近的人。

I mean, this is what we need for all sorts of problems, right? So whether it's a fast moving wildfire or frankly the air quality in LA was abysmal and even after the fire was over. You know, people would look at purple air or our sensors which come from purple air, and they'd say, oh, the PM2.5 is low and my thought is like, man, you are inhaling like cadmium, benzene and other heavy metals from cars on fire. Like this is not OK we need more truth and more sources of truth that are verified by science right and facts. And watch duty is just publishing fact after fact after fact and be like. You can figure that out right. You look at this information. We don't say evacuate now. Go right out your driveway. You're going to make it to safety. We say the wind's going this way the fire moving fast, you should make a decision based upon a bunch of facts and that's really where we shine. And I think that we used to live in a world where there was a lot of journalistic integrity and reporting around facts and less editorialization. So what we do reminds me of where we come from.

我的意思是，这正是我们应对各种问题所需要的，对吧？无论是快速蔓延的野火，还是坦白说洛杉矶糟糕的空气质量，即使火灾已经过去，人们还是会查看紫色空气图或我们来自紫色空气图的传感器数据，然后说，哦，PM2.5很低。而我的想法是，天哪，你正在吸入镉、苯和其他来自燃烧汽车的重金属。这太糟糕了，我们需要更多真相，更多经过科学验证的真相来源，对吧？我们需要的是事实。值班人员的工作就是不断发布事实，然后说：你们自己就能明白，对吧？看看这些信息。我们不会说“现在就撤离”。“赶紧离开你的车道。你会安全到达的。”我们会说“风向是这样的，火势蔓延很快”，你应该根据一系列事实做出决定，这才是我们真正擅长的。我认为我们过去生活在一个新闻操守很高、报道以事实为依据、较少掺杂个人评论的世界里。所以，我们现在的所作所为让我想起了我们的初心。

Well, frankly, we came up in a time where there was a lot more local media, too. There were reporters on the ground that could actually give us information and show up in places in our communities. And now it's been so decimated so that what's left is a bunch of editorializing from the national level. So this is really important for our own backyards. You mentioned in your talk you wanted to move into other kinds of natural disaster reporting, such as hurricanes, flooding, tornadoes. How is that going? What's the update on that progress?

好吧，坦率地说，我们是在当地媒体也很多的时候提出来的。现场有记者可以向我们提供信息，并出现在我们社区的地方。现在它已经被摧毁了，剩下的是一堆来自国家层面的社论。所以这对我们自己的后院来说真的很重要。你在演讲中提到，你想转向其他类型的自然灾害报道，如飓风、洪水、龙卷风。进展如何？这一进展的最新情况如何？

It's coming. We are working right now avidly on our flood program, which will be in the same product, of course, because, you know, I didn't call it fire duty on purpose. It is about citizens on watch duty. And so it was always the goal if we became successful or we caught the proverbial firetruck as they say that we would expand to cover all of these disasters because regardless of its Lava, tornado, fire, flood, where do I go? Where are my pets, where's my family and how do I get to safety? And so it's really we think about it as like a geospatial type of problem. Like do I need to move, yes or no, is the number one question that I ask myself. And so we're really focused now on that program. We are shooting for a spring of 2026 for that to be live and then we're going to be expanding our coverage for fire to all fifty states in December.

它即将到来。我们目前正在全力开发防洪项目，当然，它将集成在同一个产品中，因为，你知道，我故意没有把它叫做“消防值班”。它指的是公民的守望值班。所以，我们的目标始终是，如果我们成功了，或者像人们常说的，我们抓住了“消防车”的机会，我们将扩大覆盖范围，涵盖所有这些灾害，因为无论是熔岩、龙卷风、火灾还是洪水，我该去哪里？我的宠物在哪里？我的家人在哪里？我该如何确保自身安全？因此，我们实际上将其视为一个地理空间问题。比如，我是否需要撤离？是或否，这是我首先要问自己的问题。所以我们现在正全力投入到这个项目中。我们的目标是在2026年春季上线，然后我们将在12月把火灾监测范围扩大到所有50个州。

And how are the partnerships going? Are local governments more willing to collaborate these days?

伙伴关系进展如何？如今，地方政府是否更愿意合作？

Absolutely, yeah. We're doing a lot more work with a lot of municipalities, utilities and others and it's really starting to take off. It's a fascinating thing to see that story change and everybody we help starts to understand what we're here to do and then the neighboring counties find out as well. And it was really wild. You want to hear some crazy stories. What happens when towns start to burn down and they're ill prepared for fire. There are very, very many times where we will get a call between the hours of ten and three in the morning when their evacuation software is either crashing or they don't have evacuation zones. And we have geospatial engineers who will help them build their evac zones in the middle of the night at no cost and deploy it on watch duty immediately. So we're doing a lot of digital first response and no one ever sees it because you see a simple little APP that looks easy to use. But what's really happening is utter chaos throughout the night when this happens.

没错，我们确实在与许多市政当局、公用事业公司和其他机构开展更多合作，而且这项工作正在迅速发展。看到情况发生变化，看到我们帮助的每个人开始了解我们的工作内容，甚至邻近的县也开始了解，这真是令人着迷。这真是太不可思议了。你想听听一些疯狂的故事吗？当城镇开始燃烧，而他们又没有做好防火准备时会发生什么？我们经常在凌晨十点到三点之间接到电话，他们的疏散软件要么崩溃了，要么根本没有疏散区域。我们的地理空间工程师会在半夜免费帮助他们建立疏散区域，并立即部署到值班岗位。所以我们做了很多数字化应急响应工作，但人们看不到，因为你看到的只是一个看起来很容易使用的简单应用程序。但实际上，当这种情况发生时，整个晚上都会一片混乱。

It seems like that could have been lifesaving in the case of those flash floods in Hunt Texas, over the summer, the caravelle floods. Yep, yeah, wow. It's a similar problem and there's, there's a lot of, you know, sops as they call them operating procedures that need to get updated because we heard them on the radio ninety minutes before trying to decide if they were going to push out an alert or not and they decided not to for whatever reason. And that's coming out in the news now. So I'm not going to throw mud at this whole thing like it's not any one agency's fault, it's not the fire, the sheriff. It's everybody together, it's how we've all voted, what we've accepted as okay. And now we just say it's an act of god every time it happens. And I'm frankly tired of that.

看来，如果当时采取了措施，或许就能挽救今年夏天德克萨斯州亨特市（Hunt）的突发洪水，也就是卡拉维尔洪水（Caravelle floods）的悲剧了。是啊，真是令人震惊。问题很相似，而且有很多所谓的“标准操作程序”（SOP）需要更新，因为我们在洪水发生前90分钟还在广播里听到他们讨论是否发布警报，但不知出于什么原因，他们最终决定不发布。现在新闻里也报道了这件事。所以，我不想把责任全部推卸给任何一个机构，不是消防部门，也不是警长。这是所有人的共同责任，是我们所有人投票的结果，是我们一直以来默认接受的规则。现在，每次发生洪水，我们都说是天灾。说实话，我已经厌倦了这种说法。

Yeah, it seems like there are lots of ways for this to be preventable. So John, thank you so much for your work. Last question before I let you go, what is a small gratitude that you have in your life right now? A little detail or anything that you're really grateful for?

是的，似乎有很多方法可以预防这种情况。所以，约翰，非常感谢你的工作。在我让你走之前的最后一个问题，你现在生活中有什么小小的感激之情？一个小细节或任何你真正感激的事情？

I'm grateful for my small town and my community that supported me when I was building this. I love being out in the woods right outside of town and spending time with human beings who are not all trying to solve the same problem where I come from in silicon valley. Now, the conversation is like, what type of A are you in? You know, it's not very unique or interesting and so my neighbors are cattle ranchers, winemakers, restaurateurs, and they're all over the place and I love being around them and I love to support them and their lifestyle of doing this and frankly, feeding California and feeding America. And so I'm just grateful for them and their support while I was building this thing and people thought I was crazy. And now I get to help the world survive. You know, these apocalyptic moments and it's really an honor to do this. And something I could never have seen coming, yeah.

我很感激我的小镇和社区，在我创业初期给予我的支持。我喜欢待在镇外的树林里，和那些不像我一样在硅谷苦苦追寻答案的人们在一起。现在，人们总是问我：“你从事什么类型的A？” 你知道，这没什么特别的，也没什么意思。我的邻居们是养牛的、酿酒的、开餐馆的，他们来自四面八方。我喜欢和他们在一起，也乐于支持他们，支持他们的生活方式，坦白说，他们养活了加州，也养活了美国。所以我很感激他们在我创业初期给予我的支持，那时候人们都觉得我疯了。而现在，我竟然有机会帮助世界渡过难关，应对这些末日般的时刻，这真的是一种荣幸。这完全出乎我的意料。

Well, John Mills, thank you so much for your work. Thank you for your talk and for sitting down with me.

好吧，约翰·米尔斯，非常感谢你的工作。谢谢你的演讲和与我坐下来。

Thank you. I appreciate it.

非常感谢。我很感激。

That was John Mills speaking at TED next2025 and in conversation with me, Elise Hugh.

这是约翰·米尔斯在TED next2025上的演讲，他与我Elise Hugh交谈。