IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/itsrrp/qt5w85z07g.html

Review of California Wildfire Evacuations from 2017 to 2019

Author

Listed:
  • Wong, Stephen D.
  • Broader, Jacquelyn C.
  • Shaheen, Susan A. PhD

Abstract

Between 2017 and 2019, California experienced a series of devastating wildfires that together led over one million people to be ordered to evacuate. Due to the speed of many of these wildfires, residents across California found themselves in challenging evacuation situations, often at night and with little time to escape. These evacuations placed considerable stress on public resources and infrastructure for both transportation and sheltering. In the face of these clear challenges, transportation and emergency management agencies across California have widely varying levels of preparedness for major disasters, and nearly all agencies do not have the public resources to adequately and swiftly evacuate all populations in danger. To holistically address these challenges and bolster current disaster and evacuation planning, preparedness, and response in California, we summarize the evacuations of eleven major wildfires in California between 2017 and 2019 and offer a cross-comparison to highlight key similarities and differences. We present results of new empirical data we collected via an online survey of individuals impacted by: 1) the 2017 October Northern California Wildfires (n=79), 2) the 2017 December Southern California Wildfires (n=226), and 3) the 2018 Carr Wildfire (n=284). These data reveal the decision-making of individuals in these wildfires including choices related to evacuating or staying, departure timing, route, sheltering, destination, transportation mode, and reentry timing. We also present results related to communication and messaging, non-evacuee behavior, and opinion of government response. Using the summarized case studies and empirical evidence, we present a series of recommendations for agencies to prepare for, respond to, and recover from wildfires.

Suggested Citation

  • Wong, Stephen D. & Broader, Jacquelyn C. & Shaheen, Susan A. PhD, 2020. "Review of California Wildfire Evacuations from 2017 to 2019," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt5w85z07g, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt5w85z07g
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/5w85z07g.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Philip E. Dennison & Thomas J. Cova & Max A. Mortiz, 2007. "WUIVAC: a wildland-urban interface evacuation trigger model applied in strategic wildfire scenarios," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 41(1), pages 181-199, April.
    2. Cova, Thomas J. & Johnson, Justin P., 2003. "A network flow model for lane-based evacuation routing," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 579-604, August.
    3. Stephen D. Wong & Joan L. Walker & Susan A. Shaheen, 0. "Bridging the gap between evacuations and the sharing economy," Transportation, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-50.
    4. Wong, Stephen & Shaheen, Susan, 2019. "Leveraging the Sharing Economy to Expand Shelter and Transportation Resources in California Evacuations," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt6pw2w52b, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    5. Wong, Stephen D & Chorus, Caspar G & Shaheen, Susan A & Walker, Joan L, 2020. "A Revealed Preference Methodology to Evaluate Regret Minimization with Challenging Choice Sets: A Wildfire Evacuation Case Study," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt2k12q9ph, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    6. Wong, Stephen D & Walker, Joan L & Shaheen, Susan A, 2020. "Bridging the Gap Between Evacuations and the Sharing Economy," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt6kd0w387, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fitch-Polse, Dillon T. & Chen, Chen & Wong, Stephen D., 2024. "Bicycles and micromobility for disaster response and recovery," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 259-263.
    2. Cova, Thomas J. & Sun, Yuran & Zhao, Xilei & Liu, Yepeng & Kuligowski, Erica D. & Janfeshanaraghi, Nima & Lovreglio, Ruggiero, 2024. "Destination unknown: Examining wildfire evacuee trips using GPS data," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    3. Mouldi Ben Amor, 2023. "Nexus Between Foreign Direct Investment and Employment in Manufacturing and Services Sectors in Tunisia: An ARDL Approach," International Journal of Economic Sciences, European Research Center, vol. 12(2), pages 1-20, November.
    4. Bahri Korbi, Fadia & Ben-Slimane, Karim & Triki, Dora, 2021. "How do international joint ventures build resilience to navigate institutional crisis? The case of a Tunisian-French IJV during the Arab-Spring," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 157-168.
    5. Frantisek Masek & Jan Zemlicka, 2024. "Average Inflation Targeting: How far to look into the past and the future?," Working and Discussion Papers WP 5/2024, Research Department, National Bank of Slovakia.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. E. Ronchi & J. Wahlqvist & A. Ardinge & A. Rohaert & S. M. V. Gwynne & G. Rein & H. Mitchell & N. Kalogeropoulos & M. Kinateder & N. Bénichou & E. Kuligowski & A. Kimball, 2023. "The verification of wildland–urban interface fire evacuation models," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 117(2), pages 1493-1519, June.
    2. Ding Wang & Kaan Ozbay & Zilin Bian, 2021. "Modeling and Analysis of Optimal Strategies for Leveraging Ride-Sourcing Services in Hurricane Evacuation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-22, April.
    3. Stephen D. Wong & Jacquelyn C. Broader & Joan L. Walker & Susan A. Shaheen, 2023. "Understanding California wildfire evacuee behavior and joint choice making," Transportation, Springer, vol. 50(4), pages 1165-1211, August.
    4. Wong, Stephen D PhD & Broader, Jacquelyn C & Walker, Joan L PhD & Shaheen, Susan A PhD, 2022. "Understanding California wildfire evacuee behavior and joint choice making," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt4fm7d34j, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    5. Zhang, Nan & Huang, Hong & Su, Boni & Zhao, Jinlong, 2015. "Analysis of dynamic road risk for pedestrian evacuation," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 430(C), pages 171-183.
    6. Üster, Halit & Wang, Xinghua & Yates, Justin T., 2018. "Strategic Evacuation Network Design (SEND) under cost and time considerations," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 124-145.
    7. Georgiadou, Paraskevi S. & Papazoglou, Ioannis A. & Kiranoudis, Chris T. & Markatos, Nikolaos C., 2007. "Modeling emergency evacuation for major hazard industrial sites," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 92(10), pages 1388-1402.
    8. David Eichler & Hillel Bar-Gera & Meir Blachman, 2013. "Vortex-Based Zero-Conflict Design of Urban Road Networks," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 229-254, September.
    9. Yuepeng Cui & Hao Xu & Kuangmin Gong, 2023. "A diversion routing optimization model for urban evacuation planning," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 116(2), pages 2399-2416, March.
    10. Milad Haghani & Michiel C. J. Bliemer & John M. Rose & Harmen Oppewal & Emily Lancsar, 2021. "Hypothetical bias in stated choice experiments: Part I. Integrative synthesis of empirical evidence and conceptualisation of external validity," Papers 2102.02940, arXiv.org.
    11. Li, Anna C.Y. & Nozick, Linda & Xu, Ningxiong & Davidson, Rachel, 2012. "Shelter location and transportation planning under hurricane conditions," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 715-729.
    12. Jianghua Zhang & Yang Liu & Yingxue Zhao & Tianhu Deng, 2020. "Emergency evacuation problem for a multi-source and multi-destination transportation network: mathematical model and case study," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 291(1), pages 1153-1181, August.
    13. Urmila Pyakurel & Tanka Nath Dhamala, 2017. "Continuous Dynamic Contraflow Approach for Evacuation Planning," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 253(1), pages 573-598, June.
    14. Kevin D. Henry & Nathan J. Wood & Tim G. Frazier, 2017. "Influence of road network and population demand assumptions in evacuation modeling for distant tsunamis," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 85(3), pages 1665-1687, February.
    15. Rosa Marina González & Concepción Román & Ángel Simón Marrero, 2021. "Values of Travel Time for Recreational Trips under Different Behavioural Rules," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-16, June.
    16. Saadatseresht, Mohammad & Mansourian, Ali & Taleai, Mohammad, 2009. "Evacuation planning using multiobjective evolutionary optimization approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 198(1), pages 305-314, October.
    17. Adam Pel & Michiel Bliemer & Serge Hoogendoorn, 2012. "A review on travel behaviour modelling in dynamic traffic simulation models for evacuations," Transportation, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 97-123, January.
    18. Bretschneider, S. & Kimms, A., 2012. "Pattern-based evacuation planning for urban areas," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 216(1), pages 57-69.
    19. Mukesh Rungta & Gino Lim & MohammadReza Baharnemati, 2012. "Optimal egress time calculation and path generation for large evacuation networks," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 201(1), pages 403-421, December.
    20. Lim, Gino J. & Zangeneh, Shabnam & Reza Baharnemati, M. & Assavapokee, Tiravat, 2012. "A capacitated network flow optimization approach for short notice evacuation planning," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 223(1), pages 234-245.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:itsrrp:qt5w85z07g. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/itucbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.