Wildfire Evacuation Planning Can Be Greatly Enhanced by Considering Fire Progression, Communication Systems, and Other Dynamic Factors

Wildfires have become a perpetual crisis for communities across California. For life-threatening wildfires, mass evacuation often becomes the only viable option to protect lives. Yet, looking back at recent events, including the devastating 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California, there are significant challenges associated with the evacuation process, such as multi-agency coordination, agency-resident communication, and management of extraordinarily high amounts of traffic within a short period of time. Currently, emergency planners use evacuation models that are typically based on existing traffic simulation models; however, it is increasingly clear that other factors need to be considered, such as fire progression and communication systems. To address this gap, UC Berkeley researchers constructed a framework and set of models that include the combined impacts of three dynamic processes on evacuations – fire progression, communication systems, and traffic flow. The framework and models were applied to two case studies in California: the town of Paradise and the unincorporated community of Bolinas. In the Paradise case, the scenarios were based on the 2018 Camp Fire event. For the Bolinas case, the scenarios were based on hypothetical wildfire events.