John Mills, the founder and CEO of Watch Duty, created the app after being impacted by previous wildfires.

Watch Duty, an app designed to alert citizens of nearby wildfires has reached over two million users as fires burned in Los Angeles over the past week.

John Mills, the founder and CEO of Watch Duty, was inspired to create the app after being affected by previous fires in California.

The app relies on a team made up of around 200 volunteers, many being active and retired firefighters, dispatchers and first responders.

"They have a lot of experience either on the fire ground or listening to fire service radios for a very long time, " Mills said. "After a year of thinking about this, it occurred to me that the only way to solve this problem was to ban them altogether and then build this application so they could talk to the world."

The app is solely focused on fire activities, according to Mills.

"There's a lot of things missing in the app on purpose. We don't talk about helicopter accidents, we don't publish people's or firefighter's names," Mills said.

The information is gathered from official sources and radio communications, including the map which comes from fire sources.

"We are very diligent about putting out safe actionable information in real-time," said Mills. "A human-centered design is really how we think about it."

The Watch Duty team continues to prepare for future reporting as high winds are anticipated for next week.