On January 9, 2025, the Eaton Fire broke out in Altadena, California, USA, and wildfires raged in the Los Angeles area. Firefighters struggled to extinguish the fire in the Los Angeles National Forest near Mount Wilson, with strong winds blowing up the embers.
Zhao Linge | Reuters
In the past two years, Victor Makarsky has been developing an app as a digital survival kit to help people in disaster zones, whose numbers appear to be increasing by the day given the pace of climate change.
He never imagined that his work and personal life would collide in such a profound way.
Makarski and his wife flew back to Los Angeles on Wednesday night from an anniversary trip in the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest. evacuation order sunset fire has extended it to just a few blocks from their apartment.
Makarski feared the fire would spread to their home before they could rescue their cat and collect important items.
“It’s one thing to see a picture online, but it’s another thing to have the multi-sensory experience of looking out the window of an airplane and seeing the cabin smell like smoke when the plane lands,” Makarski told CNBC on Friday. .It’s like entering an airplane cabin.
Makarskyy is the company’s technical director go ahead A new startup founded in 2021, focused on providing vital health advice and services, mainly in remote areas. Aid workers and intrepid travelers can download the GOES Health app and quickly get localized tips on how to deal with insect and animal bites, altitude sickness, skin rashes and many other challenges.
Hikers can assess the risk of hypothermia, backpackers can plan how to prepare for a heat wave, or figure out how to temporarily stabilize a broken bone. All content is written or approved by Wilderness Medicine physicians, and with the exception of real-time weather and the app’s Wildlife Risk Index, all content is available offline.
GOES (Global Outdoor Emergency Support) is becoming increasingly important as people in urban environments must deal with sudden disasters caused by hurricanes, tornadoes and catastrophic fires. The company said GOES usage in the region has surged about 800% since Jan. 6, the day before the Los Angeles fires broke out, and that the number of new users in California has tripled in the past two weeks.
As of Monday, fires across Los Angeles have killed at least 24 people, leveled entire communities and burned thousands of homes and buildings. no reason The largest fire has been identified.
GOES team with CEO Camilo Barcenas.
Courtesy: GOES
Makarskyy said he uses GOES to check air quality, national alerts, wildfire preparedness guidance and more. He said that when he used GOES to look at hyper-local, more precise air quality measurements after returning home, he was surprised to find that even though one of the most widely used weather apps showed the air quality around LAX as “moderate” ”, which indicates a serious deterioration in air quality.
“As the developer of this app, I know it provides precise latitude and longitude,” he said.
GOES is far from alone in seeing usage surge as disasters increase. this duty duty Founded in 2021 and developed by a nonprofit, the app has become nearly ubiquitous in the Los Angeles area since the fires began. It was the No. 1 free app on iOS for much of last week and remained in the top five on Monday, providing Los Angeles residents with insights into where fires are burning and spreading, which neighborhoods are in evacuation zones, and Precise information on the location of outages.
in a Post on X On Friday, Watch Duty wrote: “Our systems remain 100% operational while our radio operators sleep in shifts and our engineers are working their tails off to maintain up to 100,000 requests per second with an average response time of <20 milliseconds."
Watch Duty was developed by firefighters, dispatchers and first responders specifically to communicate fire-related messages. In contrast, GOES accidentally entered the fire safety market.
According to the GOES app Make an announcement Dr. Grant Lipman, a former Stanford University professor of emergency medicine and director of the Wilderness Medicine Fellowship, founded the company in 2023 “after treating a hiker who was in critical condition for a rattlesnake bite.” Seeing the need to “make wilderness medicine more.”
“The outdoors is changing”
Camilo Barcenas, co-founder and CEO of GOES, has worked in the healthcare field for many years and spent four years in technical oversight at Stanford Adult Hospital. In 2019, he and his team began working on the GOES project, interviewing people in North America, South America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East to learn how to make them feel safer and more prepared when traveling off the grid.
He said they realized health care was “systematically broken” and the only way to improve was for people to first learn to take care of themselves.
“We made this because we believe everyone should have this,” Barcenas said. “The outdoor environment is changing and we need to be able to understand what those risks are so we can do better.”
Barcenas said he flew to North Carolina when Hurricane Helene hit the state in September to inform residents and aid groups how to use the platform. He said the app’s usefulness becomes increasingly apparent when climate disaster strikes.
“The Los Angeles wildfires highlight the acceleration of something we’ve been tracking: the democratization of wilderness medicine for urban survival,” Barcenas said. “When environmental emergencies occur, traditional emergency services and health care facilities tend to becomes overwhelmed or unavailable.”
On January 12, 2025, in Los Angeles, California, the United States, wildfires continued to cause serious damage. Firefighters continued to work in the residential area where the fire broke out. It has now entered its fifth day and caused extensive damage to the residential area.
Rockman Vural Elibor | Anatolia | Getty Images
Before returning to Los Angeles, Makarski said he prepared for his return by checking GOES for national alerts, such as wind warnings, air quality and wildfire locations. Each alert provides access to content written by wilderness medicine physicians on preparedness and mitigation techniques.
He read “What to do in case of breathing problems” related to these alerts. He said he learned that N95 masks are “the only thing that can protect against particles that fine and small.”
“So instead of buying a regular surgical mask, I went straight to buying the right product to make sure our lungs stay safe in this environment,” Makarski said.
Makarski said he and his wife were lucky not to have to evacuate. The fire was far enough away that they were safe, but close enough that when they woke up Friday morning, their car was covered in ash. The latest fire has been contained. Their cats are safe with them.
The GOES app has some free features. Users can check the air quality and sunburn risk in their location and see if there are any extreme weather advisories. For premium access, which includes Pocket Safety Guide information, subscribers pay $6 per month or $36 per year.
Barcenas said the app is rolling out many new features and has grown significantly since its launch less than two years ago.
“GOES was originally developed for outdoor adventurers to prepare for travel and handle wilderness medical emergencies with offline, visual first aid guidance,” said Barcenas. “Now, we’re seeing city dwellers using it to inform them about their outdoor health risks and respond to emergencies during environmental crises.”
