Watch Duty Adds Flood Alerts Nationwide as Free Update
Watch Duty is adding flood alerts to watch duty as a free update, extending the disaster app beyond wildfires for users across the entire US. John Mills, the company’s CEO, said the feature will send push notifications to people near flood zones if they allow location tracking.
The new alerts are the second disaster type broadly included in the app after wildfires. Watch Duty started in 2021 with a focus on California’s wildfires and later expanded nationwide, becoming a critical resource during the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles last year.
John Mills on flood warnings
Mills said flood monitoring offers a different kind of warning window than wildfire reporting. “The difference with floods is we do have more warning,” he said. “So frankly, it's a little bit easier in some regards.”
He said Watch Duty wanted to make flood information simpler for users by focusing on where the floodplain is and what the water levels are at. The app will also let users find the nearest buoy and set a push notification alert for when it reaches a high enough level that flooding could become a threat.
Federal data in Watch Duty
Watch Duty said it pulls flood information from FEMA, the National Weather Service, the US Geological Survey, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The app has used paid employee reporters and volunteers who monitor emergency responder radio channels and translate that information for users, and it also has partnerships that include Amazon's Ring cameras.
Mills said flooding reports have appeared in the app before, but only as one-off events. He said, “We wanted to start working on it in January of 2025, but you know what happened then,” and added, “This was always something we were going to do.”
Flood alerts in Watch Duty
For people near a flood zone, the practical change is a more direct alert path inside the app: if location tracking is on, Watch Duty can push flood information without waiting for a user to search for it. The company’s approach bundles agencies, water-level data, and location-based alerts on one screen, giving users a faster way to decide whether to pay attention to a nearby flood threat.
That makes the update more than a label change. Watch Duty is moving from a wildfire-focused service to a broader disaster-awareness tool, and the flood feature is built around the same idea that made the app useful during fast-moving fires: get the warning in front of the person who needs it before the window closes.
