Earlier this week, I called up journalist Alyssa Jung Perry, who lives in L.A.

Right now, I'm at my house in Los Angeles, California, specifically Highland Park.

Alyssa is a reporter and producer, and she's done some work with us here at Slate.

These days, she's in sort of triage mode, helping friends and neighbors who've been affected

by the fires.

She remembers exactly when they started, because it was right around her birthday, and

her mom was in town.

Around 7, 7.7.30 on Tuesday, the lights went out. My power went out. We heard like a huge bang.

My power went out and the winds were really gathering and we had flashlights. And my mom and I were like,

okay, well, maybe the power will come back on in like 30 minutes because that's usually what happens. It didn't. So they went to bed, but that didn't

last long. I started getting smoke and I went outside and the sky was like eerie and there was

kind of like this hazy glow to it. And was like oh there's a big fire and all over

social media Alyssa's friends and colleagues were talking about one app the fire and location

warning app watch duty everybody I know started downloading watch duty so I downloaded that and I turned the alerts on because usually I have my phone on complete silent when I sleep.

And I turned the alerts on and so it was just dinging every minute basically of like different fires.

It was like palisades, eaten.

And it was like saying evacuation, go, go, go, go, go.

Alyssa is safe, her house is safe.

But like a lot of Los Angeles, she has been relying on digital alerts, not from the county,

not from news organizations, but from watch duty.

The app has been downloaded two and a half

million times in the past week, and it shows how when it comes to natural disasters, the

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