Latest / What's Your Problem? / Racing Wildfires to Warn the Public

Transcript

Racing Wildfires to Warn the Public · What's Your Problem?

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm Jacob Goldstein. This is what's your problem? And
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: my guest today is John Mills. John is the CEO
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: and co founder of a nonprofit called watch Duty. John's
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: problem is this, how do you build an app to
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: warn people when they're in immediate danger from a natural disaster.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: To be honest, this is sort of a problem that
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I would have thought the government had solved already. And
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: of course there are government warning services, but as we've
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: seen in recent disasters fires in LA and floods in Texas,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: those government systems can and do fail, and in twenty
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: twenty one, John and his colleagues launched watch Duty to
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: fill the gap. At watch Duty, paid employees and volunteers
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: track public information like firefires, radio chatter, and they provide
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: near real time updates on the watch Duty app. So far,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Watch Duty has focused mainly on fires, but they just
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: rolled out coverage for floods as well. Watch Duty was
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: a key source of information for the LA fires in
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: early twenty twenty five, and today millions of people use
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: the app, and those users include, interestingly, a lot of
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: professional firefighters. There's a lot that's interesting about this story,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: but as you'll hear in the interview, one question I
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: kept returning to is why wasn't the government able to
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: do this? How did watch Duty succeed where the government
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: had failed? John started Watch Duty after he moved to
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Sonoma County in northern California. At that point, he had
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: already built and sold a few software companies, and he
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: told me he got interested in fire after having a
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: few close calls at his house in Sonoma.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: A month after I bought this place in twenty nineteen,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: there was a couple acre fire that my one of
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: my neighbors about a quarter mile away lit unfortunately. And
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: I'm in my office here and I hear a helicopter
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: flying over which is normal, and then it keeps flying.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: Around and I'm like, I don't know what it is.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: And then I go outside look at it, and another
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: one shows up with a water bucket on the bottom.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: That's when I realized I was in danger and something
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: was happening.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: So I didn't smell anything, I didn't see anything, and
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: all I heard were helicopters flying overhead, and that is
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: how I was alerted to my first fire.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: And did you have I don't know what are there
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: are there alerts where you live. I mean, you live
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: in what Sonoma County? You live in northern California. It's
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: not like you live in Alaska or something.
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: It's a great question.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: And look, there are alerts everywhere, but as you have
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: probably seen from the news and the Palisades and Eaten.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: Fires, the alerts are leave a lot to be desired.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: And so those men and women are doing the best
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: they can, but the infrastructure that they run on and
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: their bureaucratic processes do not allow them to do what
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: the National Weather Service does when a tornado touches down.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: When it touches down, they press the button that is it.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: No one has to get called, no one passes go.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: It is an event that is happening. Fire isn't treated
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: that way. And so what I've noticed is that like
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: you'll get alerted at some point if the fire keeps growing,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: but they're in this habit of like, oh, it's not
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: that big, it'll get under control. And while they were right,
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: it's a disaster for the people who live right next
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: to them, right, So like that's a large scale problem.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: If the fire is coming towards you, even if it's
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: a twenty acre fire, that can still change your life
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: or take.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: It twenty acre fire meaning small. If it's the acre
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: you live on, it's a big deal.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: To you, that's correct.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: And if it's on the neighbor's acre coming into your acres,
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: you better believe you want to know about it. But
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: that's not the practice that they have unfortunately.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: And so who do you think I'm going to make
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: an app? Like how do you get from there to
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the app?
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: That fire was in November of twenty nineteen. I did nothing. Well,
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: it's not true. I didn't do nothing.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: I started building sprinkler systems, I started parting my home,
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: and I started preparing so, like I realized, I got
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: myself into a mess. Didn't really understand much about this,
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: but I was learning, I was researching, I was talking
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: to people as understanding it. And then a fifty thousand
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: acre fire showed up from the dry lightning storm that
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: passed over northern California in twenty twenty. People remember this
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: as the Red Sky Day, and it looked like blade
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Runner out there, and so I had to evacuate my
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: house for seven days, stated of friends in Fountain Grove
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: by the Way, who almost lost her house.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: In twenty seventeen.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: I already the whole thing, and I was watching from
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: across the hill, and I spent day and night listening
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: to fire surface radio chatter, on the internet, researching, learning,
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: watching fire cameras, and just trying to figure out what
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: is going on around here?
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: How do I get my bearing stretch. So that's what
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: really triggered me.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: House was spared, thankfully, land was spared and ended a
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: quarter mile for my property, a different direction from the
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: other quarter mile fire that was away from me. And
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: that's what it really spurred me to start investigating. And
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: so I joined my firewives and fire safe community groups.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: I went on ride along with fire chiefs man. After
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: talking to chiefs, you realize that like every Silicon Valley
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: techie who shows up is like hate chief if you
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: thought about drones, and they just rolled their eyes like,
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: oh my god, yeah I have a drone. I got
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: it right, And so yes, I'm in there chatting with
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: them and they were talking about their new nine one
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: one dispatch and they're like, oh, we can get text
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: messages now, and I'm like that's super cool, thank god,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: it's about time. And I asked them, I was like,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: what about photos, and they're like, no, we can't do that.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: I'm like, what do you mean you don't get a
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: photo literally just text a photo? Yeah, oh my goodness,
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: Like how did you even buy this? They're like, look,
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: we're actually kind of bomb, but like we spent a
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: lot of money. It took five to get it, and
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: once it rolled out, it didn't have what we needed.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: And I'm just like, we are all in danger here,
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: like I need to help.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: And that's when it hit me.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: I realized that they weren't going to be able to
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: solve this problem. I realized who was It was the
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: same radio operators that I listened to during my fires
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: who I was going to band together, build an app,
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: and build a distributed department of emergency management.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: And that's how it all came to fruition.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: So when you say radio operators, like who are these people?
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Who are the people you're banding together with?
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: So when I went through my second fire, you listen
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: to the radios yourself, the fire service radio.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: So I have a radio here at.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: My desk, but you can also hear them online on
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: like broadcastify dot com for example, and so people broadcast
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: fire service radio up into the internet so we can
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: all hear it there are people who live in these
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: areas my area, reading norical strange places that are constantly
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: getting burned down. They had realized the same thing I
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: had realized. They only realized it before me, that they
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: were their answer for their community. And so they started
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: staying up twenty four hours a day during those fires
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: that were happening, and they started to broadcast what they
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: were hearing to their.
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: Users on Facebook.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Some of them had groups with seventy one hundred thousand
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: users on Twitter.
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: This is where everybody went.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: So I just want to be sure that I'm clear.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: So these are just people who it's not their job,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: they're not getting paid, and what they're doing is sitting
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: there listening to firemen on the radio, firemen on their
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: walkie talkies. And these people know how to understand what
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: they're saying, and they're just filtering that information and sharing
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: it on Facebook or Twitter. And that is this sort
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: is that bottom up emergency management system.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: That's what's happening. It is that analog in that symbol.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is wild. Okay, So these are your people?
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: So you now, you you what are you going to do?
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: You got your people, you got your what is your idea?
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: Well, the idea is that these these humans men and
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: women who do this are the key. They have been
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: distributed across the West, doing this on their own, on
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: their own volition, to be of service. Really, and so
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: it hit me like a ton of bricks. There're sometimes
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: you see something that you can't not see again or unsee.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: And that's when I was like, oh my god, if
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: I can convince those people that joined me and we
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: build our own emurgency, youre learning product and app, we
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: can change the world.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: We know.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: No, it did work. It is working. I mean was
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: there what were there things that went wrong in the middle? Like,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: once you have the big realization, is it smooth? Are
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: there things you still have to figure out?
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: I mean we're still figuring things out. But the implementation
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: was not very hard. My background is an engineering and
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: software that.
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: Was easy to build. I built the app in eighty days.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: I wrote most of the code myself with a bunch
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: of other volunteers because I was Lloyd at the time,
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: in between companies, just selling my last one, and so
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: I said, this is my time in life.
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: To provide value and have impact here.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: And so the next challenge though, was actually convincing the
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: radio operators that I'm not some Silicon Valley tech bro
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: trying to capitalize on their disaster.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: So you have to convince them. I mean. The interesting
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: one to me, once you start building this thing and
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: it starts to work, is what do uh, what do
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: fire departments think? What do you know government? You know,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: fire departments, government organizations have jobs called public information officer, right,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: They have people whose job is getting information to the
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: public in to be sympathetic to those people, like they
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: want to make sure that the information is correct, that
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: people aren't yelling fire in a crowded theater, you know,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: so to speak right, And so I'll use the analogy
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: all the time. I thought I was so clever. I
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: just came to the I mean this business, and so
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: I don't know what are those interactions like when they
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: find out there's some random guy building an app that
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: a bunch of random guys on the internet are using
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: to provide information respectfully.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: So what I was told by the people who were
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: talking to me who are don't do this. We'll figure
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: it out, et cetera, et cetera. We got this covered
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: and it was just a bunch of hoopla.
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: They didn't want my help obviously told.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: By fire departments essentially, but by the fire departments.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: The fire departments that I was working with loved what
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: I was doing, like this makes a lot telling you
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: not to do it. The emergency management people that I
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: was I was interacting with, Yeah, so they told me
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: not to do this. I did it in eighty days.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: So anyway, the app launches August eleventh, twenty twenty one.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Seven days later, there was a pretty big fire in
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Lower Lake County through a mobile home park and it
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: moved very fast.
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: It was wind driven.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: It burned this mobile home park down, unfortunately. And Watch
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: Duty was there and we were very popular a ready
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: because here was the key. Those radio operators already had
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: tens of thousands of followers. Combined, they had hundreds of
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: thousands of followers. Now in Silicon Valley, you'd call this
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: influencer marketing, but I refrained from using that term. That's
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: that these are my friends, volunteers now employees, right, and
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: so that's how we got it in everyone's hands. So
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: this fire lit off all of a sudden.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: Everyone's using wash Judy.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: We're putting out intelligence no one had seen, and it
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: was everywhere overnight.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: Well, that upsets.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: Emergency managers and certain fire officials who were much higher up.
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: In the ranks.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: We got on a phone call where I had a
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: now retired battalion chief have his face right next to
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: the camera on zoom just screaming at me.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: I mean, it was wild.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: What was he saying? What was he screaming?
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: We've gotten in the way, We're putting people's lives at risk.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: And then the sad part, which is a real bummer,
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: and I will say publicly because they do it all
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: the time, is that there's something called an f MAG grant.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: It's an emergency grant for funding from either state or
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: the FED. And so since we published that the forward
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: progress of the fire had been stopped, which is true
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: and is foiable because it came across the radio that
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: the people up above them a caloes already had watched
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: duty and they didn't hear the radio traffic, but they
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: saw it and watch duty and they blocked the grant.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: So basically, this fire department didn't get money that they
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: would have gotten because you showed that the fire had stopped,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: and they didn't want people.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: To correct, which is it's a bummer for many reasons.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: The first thing is that forward progress stopped just means
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: the fire isn't spreading. It doesn't mean that the interior
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: is not lighting on fire and you're losing houses. So
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: forward progress stopped is hey, it's not going to move,
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: We'll be okay. You could still lose a house. It's
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: still a disaster. So that's kind of a bummer. The
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: reality is, though, like we told the truth. That's what happened,
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: and so we're getting told that we're doing something wrong,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: and I'm like, but is the truth wrong? And that's
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: a really hard thing to grapple with. Like, we knew
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: it was the right thing to do morally and ethically,
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: but I feel bad that they didn't get their grant
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: because it might have had relief for that area. And
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: so man, it's really twisted and torn internally. But we
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: knew was the right thing to do, we kept doing it.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: There's an idea here that's really interesting to me. Like,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: California is not a resource starved state. It's a rich
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: state that has high taxes and is the home of
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Silicon Valley. Is the greatest source of technology in the
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: history of the world. Why why didn't anybody do this before?
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Why didn't the government do it.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great question, one that I ask myself
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: all the time.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: It's frustrating that we do pay taxes and yet our
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: roads are falling apart. Teachers are paying for pencils, firefighters
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: can't get engines. This is a bummer, right. This is
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: like public infrastructure that needs to exist. And so I
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: think there's something interesting we can look at as a
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: good role model for us and what we do. And
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: it actually comes from the alert and warning industry, but
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: it comes from tornadoes. So the tornado warning system is
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: a role model for watch duty.
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: And let me explain why.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: And this is public just to be clear, this is
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: a government system. Yep. Okay, yep.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: And we have built great things before in this country
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: and we will build them again. And so this has
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: been around for a very long time. After the Second
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: World War, we had all these air raid sirens that
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: are like, what are we going to do with these
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: damn things we put up everywhere? Well, NWS is like,
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: I know what we can National.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: Web use these for correct Yes, I know what we
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: can do with these.
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: We can use these for alert and warning for tornadoes.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: So brilliantly what they did is they set up. Similarly,
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: a distributed network of spotters, their weather spotters. When those
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: people who are anointed by the NWS are near a
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: tornado that touches down and actually now we can actually
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: almost know from space from satellites if we can get
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: up anyway.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: Besides the point, that's a history lesson.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Someone will call the NWS office who's a spotter, and say,
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: tornado touchdown in my backfield.
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: It's about this Latin long well.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: They hang up the phone and they press the button,
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: do not pass go, do not wake up the judge,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: the supervisors. It is happening. We know what's happening, and
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: I can see it.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Sirens go off all around where that tornado is, and
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: everybody knows go to the basement.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: Actually, it's funny what they do. You know what they do?
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Take a guess, get in their car and go chase
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: after it.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, some people do that, but the average human, good
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: point average human goes on their front porch.
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: And looks out. We all want to know where to
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: is right.
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: I love the social science aer I'm doing this stuff.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: It's so fascinating.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: I would do the same thing.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: And apparently they say the sky turns like a greenish
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: color where they know it's close.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: So why don't we have that for fire? So we
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: did it for that. Like what's the problem?
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: You tell me? I do not know, but anyway, I'll
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: potificate with you.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, so there's some interesting idea to me about
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: like bottom up versus top down? Right? When I think
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: about you know, whoever, when I think about the kinds
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: of software people sell to the government, right, it's I
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: picture this very old fashioned system, you know, like the
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: military contractors of the fifties or something, where they like
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: come in and they pitch some very expensive thing, and
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: of course none of it's going to be off the shelf.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: They're going to build it all from scratch, and it's
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: going to take a long time, and it's not going
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: to be that good. Right. And the thing that's interesting
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: to me about the thing that you built is how
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: bottom up it is, right, It's it is so profoundly
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: bottom up rather than top down. And it seems like
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: a government is not set up to build bottom up systems.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: There's something that you hit on right there that's actually
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: the problem. Software will not save the government. We need
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: bureaucratic process change.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: So what I mean.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: By this it's very simply plug because I now have
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: be who are competing with me.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: They think they're a competitor.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Let's put it that way, because they're going to go
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: build a software product and give it to the government.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: But the government, especially in these in fire has a
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: bureaucratic process back and forth, works with the sheriff. The
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: sheriff actually does the alert and warning, not the fire service.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: Is a game a telephone the process has broken. It's
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: not a weather spot or who makes a phone call
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: then the unilatter repress the button. There's too many parties
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: at play, and that's where the delay comes in. And
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: that is why software alone will not solve the problem.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Still to come on the show, John and I talk
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: about the LA Fires of twenty twenty five. We talk
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: about floods, were watch duty is today and more. Okay,
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: let's talk about the LA Fires of twenty twenty five.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: Tell me about what it meant for watch do.
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: I mean?
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: Look, here's here's the way I try and talk about
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: this and look at it. So leaving LA behind for
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: two seconds, if you look at northern California, even more
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: farther north than I am, because I'm in Sonoma, county.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: These areas, including mine, have been ravaged by fire over
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: and over and over again. And so if you go
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: to like Klamath River Area, Sisku and Delnore counties, we
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: have more subscribers than there are citizens in those counties.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: That is how deeply penetrated we are in these areas.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: What does that mean? People subscribe on two phones. They
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: subscribe for the county over. I know, what does that mean?
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: The county over? That's exactly right.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: So everybody has it. Everybody has it the way everybody
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: has correct.
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's insane, right, it's wild.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: And so we've already been like the lifeline for these
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: these communities, including my own.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: Now let's bring La back into the situation.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: We never thought this would happen, never wanted this to happen,
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: right like we were there to meet the moment.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: But oh my goodness.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: You know, sixteen thousand structures destroyed, thirty two people killed.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, it was a colossal calamity of errors. And frankly,
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: it was a fire. It was a hurricane with a
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: fire inside. So this is not me throwing shade at
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: you know, the firefighters. I mean, it's an unstoppable force.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: When you say hurricane because it was so because the
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: winds were so high and that was so bad.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it just it just runs and runs and runs,
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: and you cannot stop fires like that. So we were
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: built for scale. We knew i'd say three or four
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: days in advance that a PDS was coming as what
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: they call it particularly a dangerous situation.
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: It's a level of red flag above red flag.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: It means high winds, dry fuels, low well to humidity,
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: everything is ripe for something real bad to happen. So
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: we staffed up, we got everyone ready, and then sure enough,
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: ten thirty in the morning on the seventh, all hell
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: broke loose in including our systems, which didn't crash, but
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: I mean we were sleeping in shifts. I mean we
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: were doing hundreds of thousands of new downloads an hour.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: We had one quarter of La download watch duty in
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: the first week. I mean it exploded overnight, right, We
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: more than doubled.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: Our user count.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: And this is this time four engineers who kept this
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: thing up doing one hundred thousand requests a second, which
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: is like Wikipedia scale, with four duds in their basements
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: trying to door dash food to each other and doing
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: whatever we can do to keep this thing up, because,
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: as you may have seen, the alert and warning systems crashed.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: They sent false alerts three different times. Parts of the
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: GIS systems that they used crashed, cal fire systems crashed.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Everybody turned to us, and it was I didn't sleep right.
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: For a month, I think after that.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: So there's this photo that I saw you mentioned somewhere,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: so I looked it up, and it is a compelling photo.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: There's a photo not of a fire, but of the
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: LA Emergency Operations Center, right, which is like you know,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: command Central, and they have like all these different screens,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: and in the giant screen in the middle of the
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: wall in this big room of this government organization is
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: watch Duty. Is your app during the LA fires? What
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: do you make of that?
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: Well, I was just speaking to Congress about this a
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: couple months ago, and I told them that, like, this
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: is not a story of success.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: This is a story of failure.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: How the hell did a couple misfit hackers had radio
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: operators built something so big and so critical that it
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: was used by the people who are fighting and risking
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: their lives for us, that they rely on our infrastructure.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: I'm upset. We can do better.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: I mean, I would imagine they had spent a tremendous
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: amount of money on some other system that worked less well,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Like I don't know that, but is that the case?
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Of course, yeah, the case.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: And it's not because the emergency managers don't care. It's
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: it's not that like, no, it's nothing that.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Don't I don't really believe in villains in that way,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: but I like systemic failures are more interesting to me,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: frankly than individual villains anyway, So like, what is the
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: systemic failure here?
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: This is an interesting question.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: So I have a couple of theorists on this one
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: being it's a very simple one and it's about money.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: There is not much money in this industry, so if
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: there was more money, it would drive more innovation. And
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: again I am running a nonprofit here, I'm not a
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: pure bred capitalist. My point is is like people who
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: are trying to go build great things in Silicon Valley
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: are oftentimes money oriented. So they're much more likely to
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: go work at Androl, which can sell to the DoD
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: now the DOW, than they are selling to firefighters who
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: can barely afford a fire engine. Right, So like it's
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: just basic capitalism. I don't like what I believe, but
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: like this is what I've seen.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Maybe, but like there are lots of witch software products.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, I I go back to this idea of
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: bottom up versus top down, Right, Like the thing you
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: have built is you didn't start with the idea that
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: we have to get the information from the fire department
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: or from the government, right. You started with the idea of, like,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: there are people out there right now, sitting in random
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: rooms in random places, listening, gathering that information already, and
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: what we need to do is reliably aggregate it. We
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: need to take this dispersed information and aggregate it from
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: the bottom up. And that that to me seems like
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: the big exciting idea you have and why the thing
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: you built works.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, that is part of it. But there's a misnomer
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: on there. The data comes from the government, right, it.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Comes from it comes from individual people who are employed
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: by the government. Right, it comes from firefighters who are
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: talking to each asty. But it doesn't it doesn't have
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: to get aggregated up to some public information official who
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: then has to ask his boss if he can, you know,
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: send the press release or whatever it is, right.
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: Right, So we should definitely clarify here for our conversation
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: and for the readers what the government means, right, because
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: there's Little G and Big G. Little G are the
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: men and women on the ground fighting for their freaking
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: lives and fighting for hours. Yeah, Big G is very faceless,
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: and Big G is usually getting software sold to them
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: top down to your point, and they're the ones often
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: buying this stuff.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about let's talk about how watch Duty works. Now.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: I downloaded the app, so can you sort of just
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: talk me through it, Like, let's pick a fire and
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: tell me, tell me how it works. You choose, like
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: do you have you must have the app hand, you know.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's see what's actively happening right now. You're picking
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: a day that we never know what's happening. Yeah, luckily,
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: knock on wood.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: Right now it's a.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: Little bit quiet, so we're going to pick. There's a
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: fire that is burning up here in Solano County called
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: the Putah Fire. It's very strange name.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: Has an eight la to our listeners who speak Spanish,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: it has an aged so it's not what you yes, okay, goodness,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: I clicked on it and it tells me, so tell
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: me what I'm looking at says, it says, what is
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: this is the address or something twenty five five hundred
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: block of CAA one eighth one. It's a highway. It's
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: just telling me the address of where it started California, Okay.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: And you can see the pin drop that little flam
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: icon is where the fire started. That's not where it's
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: got and.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: There's like a red boundary around it. Is that where
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: the fire is burning? What is that? Yeah?
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: That is where the fire is burned. Fires are only mapped.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Once or twice a day, depending In California, we have
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: an overflight called the Fire's Program that flies with people
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: inside with an infrared camera, so that gets more real time,
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: but oftentimes you're not going to get a fire perimeter
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: for a day or days, depending on how remote your
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: area is.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Frankly, so tell me what else this tells me about
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: the fire?
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So what's what?
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: The magic is in the reporting.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: So if you look on the bottom of that page,
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: you see what would we referred to as a news
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: feed if we were a social media site, which we're not,
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: but you can see a timeline of events. So if
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: you scroll all the way down to the bottom, you'll
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: see the first ignition, fire reported here, Engines, dispatched, resources are.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: Coming, et cetera, et cetera.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: So in your mind's eye, what happens if you're a
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: user who lives here. You hear the tactics. More engines
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: are coming, all call is happening, tankers are coming. You're like,
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: oh no, this is getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: And so you start to like hear the storyline.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: And presumably with the app I've set up to have
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: an alert if there is a fire near my house
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: is the first thing that happens.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: So it notifies you, right, And so the story is
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: where the magic is.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: There's a message it looks like so there's oh, it
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: started as a prescription I burn YEP, and then that
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: part was an automated message five days ago, and then
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: one day ago there's a message from Evan Jacob's regional captain.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Does that mean they are on your staff or they're
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: a volunteer? What is regional captain mean?
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: He's paid staff. He's actually training to be a tanker
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: pilot right now in Montana.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: I love that it says evacuation warnings have been requested
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: for Golden Bear estates and Bobcat Ranch. The fire is
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: five to six acres burning in the grass and currently
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: hung up on a ridge. Highway twenty eight has been
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: requested to be closed between Pleasant Valley Road and Canyon
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: Creek Road per incident Command. So he's telling you that
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: not that there's an evacuation warning, but that people are
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: talking about an evacuation warning. So you're getting the news,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: you're learning about this ahead of time. This is you
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: got it. Yeah, so go on.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: So these are all the tactics.
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: These are all the tactics that they're that they're going
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: through at the time. And so this story is what
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: helps you paint a mental model right of what's going on.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: So let's use the other example really quickly for a
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: good one. So my favorite is when a fire pops off,
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: people see it, they look on their phone, they're like, oh, okay,
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: it's not near me.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: Engines are coming, And the next thing you.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Know, they're like forward progress has been stopped and they
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: could just turn their mind off again.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: They're like, you know what, it's okay.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: And so the de escalation story is also really important
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: that the government doesn't do very well. So sometimes like
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: if you don't close the loop people are still panicking.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: Huh, you gotta close.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: So if they did get an alert, which they often don't,
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: then they don't get one telling them it's okay until
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: much much later.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: So there adrenaline is up. They're still paranoid.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Giving people the storyline allows them to prepare and think
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: about what's going on. And that is one of the
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: biggest like trauma reducing things in our app that everyone
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: tells me they love more than anything else.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Is it's over. Is a message that says it's over.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Correct, You're gonna be okay, turn your brain off, go
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: back to lunch.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Is there a real of call it false positives? I mean,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: if I see somebody, right, evacuation warnings have been requested, Like,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: it's kind of complicated, right, what I hear in that
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: is evacuation warnings. But maybe it was requested for a
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: bad reason. Maybe I don't need to evacuate. Like that
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: seems complicated.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: It is complicated, but it's the truth. Yeah, And so
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: that's a fun one. The truth is hard, right.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And like are there I guess it's I mean,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm a journalist by training. I guess it's
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: always good for people to know more are there any
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: instances where you think it's not?
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: Absolutely we have we have a code of conducts that
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: we there are certain things we never ever do. We
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: don't talk about what's called an IWI an incident within
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: an incident, we don't name.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know that. What's an incident with an incident?
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: Firefighter death I see right, or engine roll over our life.
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: There are there are scanners out there who do not
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: have this journalistic integrity and they'll say engine number three
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: forty seven rolled. Someone's wife or husband is going to
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: hear that and think they're dead. Right, That is not useful.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: So we don't publish block numbers, we don't publish names.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: You can see.
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: Even the fire that we're talking about right now, we
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: don't have an address, an exact address. We don't say one, two, three,
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: four Main Street, just lit a fire. Right, So when
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: you think about it from a large scale, back again,
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: like what is useful to know? Right, not a firefighter
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: died fighting for your life, right, it's actually that the
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: fire is burning over this ridge, or it's hung up
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: on the ridge, it's not moving, the tankers are coming.
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: That story is important. So there are lines, and we
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: do have practices for this to your point.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Yes, So let's talk about the sort of state of
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: the app. Now, how does it work? Like you're big? Now,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: it's not four guys send in DoorDash to each other anymore? Right,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Like what is it like? What is this thing you
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: have built?
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: At this point? It's become a big thing.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: It's almost sixty paid staff, about three hundred volunteers at
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: this point, and so it's gotten very large. We have
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: a career ladder for volunteers who want to become paid staff,
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: and many of them do a lot of them are
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: actually ex fire who want to be of service and
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: they can't help it. You know, just because you hang
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: up your yellows doesn't mean to stop fighting fire, and
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: so hits wild. We have dispatchers and firefighters and law
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: enforcement officers, sons and daughters of firefighters who've been hearing
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: the radio chatter and the background their entire life, and
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: so hits their way to be of service. And so
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: a lot of them who are passionate about their hobbies
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: and somehow they got lucky enough we found each other
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: and now we can pay them more money than they
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: were doing at a job. But a lot of them
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: didn't like, you know, so it's really an honor to
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: give them like a life and trajectory to do something
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: bigger than themselves out of a hobby.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: And so the volunteers are listening to radios and sharing
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: the information through the app. That's basically what they're.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: Doing twenty four And the important thing to note here
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: is that in the background, we use slack for everything, right, so.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: Chat for you, No, it's Chat or Microsoft Teams or whatever.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: We divided up the country and slack in different regions,
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: so we get signals from government sources and they show
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: up in Slack. So all of a sudden, let's use
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: this example that we're looking at with the Puza fire. Here,
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: what happens is that a signal comes in. We know
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: that firefighters are being dispatched somewhere we don't always know
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: yet where. Some signals are digital and it has an address.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: Some come over the radio. So what happens is it
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: drops a notification and slack everybody in that region sees, oh, shoot,
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: there's a fire. They start they put their ears on
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: is what they call it. They start listening. So now
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: what's happening is they're collaborating in real time so they're
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: all listening and they're all typing what they're hearing. Sometimes
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: they'll be copying each other saying the same thing. Sometimes
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: they'll be saying, yes, I heard that, confirm, confirm post it,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: who's got the con who's got control, who's running the incident?
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: And so we are collaborating all the time. It's not
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: one lone wolf sitting in the radio shack somewhere.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: It's interestingly low tech at a certain level. Right. That's
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: actually the people listening to the radio and checking each
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: other is sort of.
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: Wild, But that's how firefighters fight fire.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah right, Yeah, we just plug into the same infrastructure
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: they're plugging into.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: It like blows people's minds.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: We think we have like satellites and we can track
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: every hotspot, like there's some amazing future.
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: But literally people talking to each other being like, hey,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: there's a fire over here, somebody come help me put
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: it out.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: You got it?
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Did I read that? You got a grant? Or are
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: working with Google to try and use AI to transcribe
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: the radio traffic that people listen to the radio.
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: That is that is correct, that is happening right now. Actually,
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: we use tons of AI to help US sift and
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: soar information coming from public information officers reading PDFs looking
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: at images for smoke and fire. Right like, we've been
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: using tons of AI, but we have a human as
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: the final backstop saying thank you machine that was actually wrong,
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: or that's in the wrong place, or that was actually
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: fifteen acres not fifty acres.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: So hard one. It's a hard one in the English language.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: Well, and especially when it's radio chatter over one hundred
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: and fifty five megahertz frequencies deep out in the woods.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: Their static and so it's a little challenging. So our
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: goal is to again enable the humans. It's a copilot model,
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: not a replace the human model.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: So you were talking about how some government officials were
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: antagonistic when you were starting out. I understand that you're
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: now you now have a product that that governments are
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: actually buying from you. Not only you're working with governments,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: but they're a client. Tell me about that. So watch
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: Study is a free anyone can download it.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: There's no sign up, no email, no tracking, no phone number,
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: no nothing. It's like Craigslist. It's it's just there and
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: it works. So that's that's the point right now. If
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: you let you become a member of our nonprofit organization.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: You can pay twenty five dollars a year and then
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: you get a couple extra features in the app. The
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: one that we have to pay a bunch of money
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: for is flight tracking. So now I can see the tankers,
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: I can see the types of tankers. I can see
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: the helicopters, and I can see where they're working. And
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: then if you spend ninety nine dollars a year, you
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: can get all the professional features. There's more in there
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: that we constantly are adding. But it's jurisdictional boundaries. It's
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: where the power lines are, It's what are the radio
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: frequencies and tones? Where are the repeaters because radios have
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: to hit repeaters to.
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: Bounce out to the next canyon.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: So these are things that firefighters would want to know,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: like jurisdictional boundaries and power lines. Yes, I'm worried about
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: a fire coming to my house. These are not things
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: that I'm preoccupied with. That's correct, and that's how that's
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: why it's valuable. Know how many like how big is
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: that business? I know you're a nonprofit, but whatever, how
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: many people you know, like are there big fire departments?
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: Who's buying that.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's probably about thirty forty thousand professionals
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: currently using I'd have to look.
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: It changes a lot. We've been selling like crazy recently.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: But that's that's a lot. I mean, that's I mean,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: there's that many. It's a lot of firefighters, right, presumably
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: that's mostly firefighters or what.
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: Who is now?
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, now it's actually it's actually mostly utilities, powerwater, light, railroad.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: All those folks have it, and firefighters also have it too,
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: and emergency managers also have it. And so here's the
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: fun part about this. We don't track anybody. So unless
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: you sign up, I actually don't know who you are.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: And if you sign up with like your Yahoo account
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: that you signed up with fifteen years ago, like, I
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: don't know who this person is.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: So right, But if it's whatever PG and E dot
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: com or something, then you know that it's correct.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: They're one of our largest customers, right, and they help
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: support us. But we found though, as we go through
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: fire departments and we have a lot more relationship with
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: the fire service, we find out, oh wait, I pay
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: for it myself, or oh I swiped it on my
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: purchase card, and like you find out, They're like, oh, shoot,
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: there's like seventeen or seventy different people all paying for this.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: I'm like, you guys, realize there's a discount a lot
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: if you all buy in bulk. And they're like, oh
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: my god, this is great. And then they find out
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: here's the fun part. And then they find out we
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: can overlay their data on watch duty, and that is
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: what's blown their mind.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: What does that mean when you say overlay their data.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: So let's use a power company, for example. A power
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: company or a water company has assets that are under threat.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: They want to know where the fire is, where it's
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: going in relation to their assets, to their power line correctly,
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: or water lines or railroads right, it could be any
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: of these things.
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: It's men, women and equipment in the way.
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: So it's like it's like gis geographical information is just
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: like adding layers the map.
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: Correct And so it's interesting because we thought that us
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: selling them the data in a nice format that they
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: could put in their gas would actually be really valuable
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: to them.
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: It turns out it's not.
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: And here's why we've democratized this information so everybody has
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: it on their phone. So when you sell it to
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: the operations department. There's a couple of people in a
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: room somewhere and only they can see it.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Well, you're back in that the top down world. Right,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: that's right. This is my hammer and a nail. Like
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: to me, every problem in this story looks like top
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: down versus bottom up.
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: It is it is.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, you're absolutely right, and so we've been able to
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: provide an immense amount of impact to troubleman, firefighters, people
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: on the ground, and now they're getting more out of it.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: So now they're ingesting everything from like show me all
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: my fire hydrants, show me my jurisdiction, show me my firehouses,
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: show me my LA Unified School District is a customer
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: who has all their six hundred and fifty buildings in there,
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: and so it makes sense.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: But when they use it, are they using the app
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: like I'm using but they can lay there? They they
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: sort of rather than starting with their software, they start
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: with your app and then they customize it for themselves
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: to lay their schoolhouses over. It is that the way
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: it works.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: You got it, yeap.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: That is extremely interesting, And just in the last few
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: days you added floods. This is the news. I did
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: a news search before we talked to CF I was
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: missing anything, and it was floods.
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: Floods are new just yesterday.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Congratulations, tell me about floods.
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: Thank you. Well.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: Fires are the hardest to report on and it's a
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: lot of radio traffic work. If we look at the
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: other disasters, flooding being next. There's two reasons we picked it.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: The first and obvious one is it kills more people
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: than fire. It is a catastrophic problem. It also needs help,
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: so that's why we picked it.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that. I didn't know that more people
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: died from flood This is in the United States.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, fires don't kill that many people, believe it or not.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: It definitely kills people, and we just saw in the
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: Palace dates and even fires it does. But like the
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Kerville flood as you just saw last year in July
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: fourth killed one hundred and twenty five people. Twenty five
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: of them were little girls Texas summer in Texas, that's right. Yeah,
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: And so floods have been a much bigger problem for
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: much longer, and they don't involve as much radio traffic.
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: So let's get into this. There's a lot of really
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: good signals. Again, back to my favorite weather service, the
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: NWS provides a great service to the world. And if
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: you look at Watch Judy today, you'll see all the
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: NWS polygons and alerts. So you can see the Doppler radar,
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: you can see where the flood warnings are.
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: And then my favorite.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: Feature, because I live near a river here is the
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: river gauges. To the river gauges are actually operated by
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: the US Geological Service. Turns out it's fascinating and so
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: these are gauges that are on bridges with a float
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: that moves up and down and it radios in when
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: it's moving.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Beautiful.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: Analog love analog, man, I do.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: So what's really cool for me living here is that
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: if you live by a river, everybody knows their number.
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: So I live near the Russian River. Here's what I
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: mean by their number.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: The number is when I have to GTFO when things
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: are going to get real south, real fast, right, we
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: got to get western. So some people live at twenty feet,
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: some people live at twenty eight feet. Some people are
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: above the hill and don't care at all, right, but
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: they have to know their number.
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: And so that number is the depth of the river
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: near your house. Is that what that number is?
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: You got it right, And that's really when you start
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: to know what to do.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: And is actually what you care about the depth of
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: the river upriver? Presumably you want to know before it gets.
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: To you that is that's right, deep, that's right, that's right.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: And so what's a little different about about this feature
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: is that you can now set your tolerance for pain
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: on your own and you can put the phone in
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: your pocket and live your life and know that it's
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: going to ping you when the river gauge hits five
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: feet below and you have to care and you get
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: pushed notified now I know.
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: So this is much more automated than the fire thing
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: you're saying. Basically, there is a there is a device
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: floating in the river that you're worried about, and it
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: is already sending out a radio signal. And now you
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: can get a ping whenever you want when that device
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: gets to whatever, when the river gets to whatever level
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: is of concern to you.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: That is yes, that is the first part, and then
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: we add reporting on top of that. And so now
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: we do the same thing we always do for only
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: catastrophic flooding. If it's raining a lot, we're not going
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: to start pinging your phone, right, But when it's life
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: and death, and that's what watched Guda is about. It's life,
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: death and property and livelihoods not you know, get your surfboard,
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: go surfing. And so that's when we'll chime in and
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: we'll actually ping you and start doing the same thing
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: we did in the Garden Grove has Matt incident that
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: almost exploded in Orange County. Is we just listened to
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: the pios, We listened to incident commanders, and we relay
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: human consumable information for you to follow along with.
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: So it's a yes.
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: And there is more digital signal in flood than there
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: is in fire.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: We've talked about some interesting kind of big ideas and
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: so I'm curious, you know, what you've learned, what you're
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out? What do you make of things?
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: Oh? I think we've talked about a lot of them.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: But like, what does it look like to have like
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: a disaster a learning platform that just works across the
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: board like that.
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: This should have been a solved problem.
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: Right, NWS and FEMA and everyone should have gotten together
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: just figure out this problem. And there are great examples,
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: like I said, with tornadoes, we know what to do
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: and it's not getting done, and so it's we're taking
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: it on our shoulders to do it. And so at
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: some point you'll see tornadoes in there, you'll see tsunamis
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: in there, and you'll see all these other events that
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: you care about, even if you're not a weather nerd, right,
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: because there's plenty of weather apps, and that's not really
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: where we play. We play in a world that we
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: want to be there for. It's the app we want
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: you to have and you never want to have to use.
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: So if you download it and put it in your
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: pocket and never hear from us, we're doing our job.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: You're safer. We all know what's happening. And so our
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: goal is to really give people a fighting chance right
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: when this happens, when fire comes lava, when tornadoes, I
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: want a fighting chance. And the tornado Warning system is
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: our role model. And I hope America can get out
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: of its own way and start to build better infrastructure
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: again like we used to.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round. Okay,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: let's do the lightning round. I love jargon, and I
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: feel like the radio traffic that you and your colleagues
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: are listening to must be full of jargon, and I
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: want you to teach me some give me, like, give
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: me a few of your favorites.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: Well, there's a couple, and we don't always abbreviate them, actually,
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: and the fire surface doesn't either often. But ROC report
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: on conditions. That is a really important one for us.
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: When an engine first gets there, they will give out
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: report on conditions and it sounds like this fire burning uphill,
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: heavy timber, critical rate of spread, you.
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: Know, all resources requested.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: Sounds bad.
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: That's a signal to us where like, holy shit, this
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: is going to be a really bad one.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: And then you hear things like reporter conditions like small
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: roadside spot extinguished by locals. That's my favorite, Like someone
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: pulls over with a fire with a fire extinguisher in
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: their car and puts it out. The amount of vehicle fires,
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: that spread of the vegetation is real, and so the
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: report on conditions is like, that's what that's what we're
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: waiting for.
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: That's all we want to know. So that's a really
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: big one.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: Give me a little like do they do the tens?
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know ten four is a classic, but
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: aren't there a bunch of tens? Ten? Ten, ten, twenty.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: Is that not a thing?
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: No, not not really, not really.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: I mean it's interesting because fire service is really and like,
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: don't get me wrong, like I love what the police
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: do as well, Like fire service is really a mutual
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: aid thing. And so there's lots of other people involved
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: in listening. So it's every color of every engine and
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: every patch has to speak English on the same radio
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: traffic radio channels, right, and then add in power, water
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: light tailco railroads. There's firefighting railroad engines. There are huge
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: engines with massive cannons and they drive the ravines, wetting
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: everything wild. It's pretty it's the photos are intense. It's
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: absolutely bonkers. And then you have dot DPW. They're trying
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: to open up roads and keep things moving. Like mutual
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: aid is mutual.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: So the firefighters who are talking into the radios know
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: that they're talking to everybody. They know that they're speaking publicly,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: not to just some other firefighter.
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: That's correct.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: What's another domain besides emergencies natural disasters that might benefit
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: from this kind of community sourced bottom up information.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: I mean that's an easy one to answer, right, I mean,
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: like look at the the os int community or open
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: source intelligence community, that happens on Twitter and other places.
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: Now we call it x but.
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: There's tons of people who do incredible amount of war
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: reporting and monitoring and intelligence gathering and OS and Defender
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: is a really good one on on on Twitter, and
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: these these guys and gals are really good at gathering
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: intelligence and spreading the info to the world. And so
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: there's a lot of other role models of this.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: What's an example of what they figure out? Those those
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: kinds of people.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: They track airplane flights and monitors for example, they're like, hey,
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: there's all these KC one thirty is all flying over
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: the ocean right now. KC one thirty is a refueling plane.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: And when you see like ten refueling planes crossing the pond,
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: you're like.
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: Oh, oh, something's up.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: Right, And so like there's all these little ways that
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: you can look at this intelligence and glean something from it.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: So it's everywhere, and like Wikipedia is open source and
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: tell right, like, yes, it's not too dissimilar, and so
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: this exists other places.
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a really interesting, uh kind of analogous
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: organization to watch duty in a weird way, right, it's
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: it's bottom up information. If you weren't working on watch duty.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: What would you be working on I'd probably be woodworking. Frankly,
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: I have a big ranch to manage. What was the
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: last thing you built out of wood?
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: Uh?
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: Just last week or two weeks ago.
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: I just finished four very large, twelve foot long redwood
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: tables on rolling wheels, so I can entertain and have
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: have big parties. And I just had a bunch of
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: fire chiefs over spent the night a couple of weeks ago.
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: Which was awesome.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: You had a slumber party with fire chiefs.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: It's more of a you know, living boys dream you get,
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: except that I can drink bourbon and play with fire.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: It's the twelve year old boys dream. It's it's great.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: What's what's the DIY project? You got in over your
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: head on.
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: Watch Didy?
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: You know, like this thing is a monster, like what
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: we knew we were gonna you know, catch you know,
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: ride the dragon. But it's this thing's bigger than we
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: then we could.
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: Have hoped or expected. So that's a pretty big one.
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: Living off the grid is an interesting challenge, and most
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: people think living off the grid means power problems. That's
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: not true. Power is very easy to manage. It's very digital.
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: Now it's super easy to my systems never go down.
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: You know what's hard keeping water in the freaking pipes.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: I am chasing water problems. I have a mile and
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: a half a pipe, my wells a half a mile
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: from me. I have tank arrays all over the place
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: as we speak. I have a water problem that I
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: fixed one and found two more at the same time.
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: And so I built water monitoring systems so I know
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: when the waters are going down.
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: I know when I'm losing water. I can open and
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: close valves and watch the data and so over my head,
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: like I don't that's a big one.
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: I fight my way out of everything, including the one
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: I got myself into the watch duty. But like I
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: just I don't give up, and I know I can
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: solve these problems.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: What's your water problem? Right now?
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: I'm losing about two hundred gallons a day on one
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: side of my lines, which isn't that much given I
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: produce two or three thousand a day and I have
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: thirty five gallons thirty five thousand gallons in tanks.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: When I open the.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: Valve, the water comes out, so it's gravity fed, mostly
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: for fire reasons. But what that means is that small
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: leak will become a big leak, and then vines will
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: grow their way inside the pipe and start to slowly
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: break the thing open.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: So I have to address it. At some point.
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: I might have two years, I might have two days.
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: It's eventually going to break. What's your next big project?
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: Probably some tree houses that might be next. I have
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: a couple of cabins, I have a couple of yurts.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: I have more to build.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: I've always wanted to build treehouses. I've got to do
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: a couple of bridges as well. Have a real housing
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: crisis here on my property.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: We have too many friends and guests and I want
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: places them to stay.
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: And so that's something that I really think about, is
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: my guest you know, experience, and having more people here
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: to share this place with me. Because with the amount
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: of taxis and insurance I paid this land, man, I
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: don't own it, you know.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: I'll give it to the nonprofit when I'm dead.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: And I want to keep this thing going and keep
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: innovating here and bringing people together to build weird things
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: that change the future.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: Great ending. Thanks for your time.
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: Here, Very welcome. It's a lot of fun. I love
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: talking about it. I do it every day.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: John Mills is the co founder and CEO of Watch Duty.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: Please let us know what you think of the show,
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: which you want to hear more of, which you want
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: to hear less of particular guest ideas. You can email
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: us at problem at pushkin dot fm. I read all
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: the emails. You can also find me on x grum LinkedIn.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: Really do appreciate all the messages that we get. Today's
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: show was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang and Trina Menino.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: It was engineered by Hansdale She and edited by Lydia
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: Jean Kott. I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: week with another episode of What's Your Problem