Home » Evacuation plans: the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men (Part II)

Comments

Evacuation plans: the <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/the-best-laid-plans-of-mice-and-men-often-go-awry">best laid schemes</a> o’ mice an’ men (Part II) — 42 Comments

  1. By my calculations, the speeds you quoted are between 68 and 204 mph. I’m guessing that these refer to the speed of the fire going up a mountain ridge and not on a flat. No one is going to out race the flame front at those speeds.

  2. Paul in Boston:

    Well, if the start of the fire really was only 7 miles away from Paradise (which I doubt, actually), and the first evacuation order came an hour and a half later, that’s much slower than the speeds you’re listing. However, fires don’t follow a straight line from point A to point B, which is another reason it’s very hard to tell what the true speed was. I think there’s little doubt it was very fast.

    I also read recently that there has been a beetle infestation in the trees in recent years, leaving a lot of dead trees. Dead trees burn fast, compared to living, healthy trees.

  3. football field per 3 seconds
    900 feet per 3 seconds
    18000 feet per minute
    3.4 miles per minute
    204 miles per hour

    Would be at the coast in one hour – clear to Sacramento in 30 minutes – very doubtful.

  4. Your calculation difficulties originated with commenter Cicero, who had the fire traveling 65 miles to reach Paradise, when in fact it traveled a little more than one-tenth that distance. A few minutes with Google maps will show that the town of Pulga, where the fire began, is about seven straight-line miles from Paradise (access the “measure distance” tool by right-clicking on the map).

  5. As for the siren in coastal Washington (and other coastal areas I imagine) they have tsunami warning sirens and they periodically run tests and they are widely announced in advance so the scaring people shouldn’t be an issue. So everybody knows it is a tsunami alert as that is the only thing it is for and they could have a fire alert system in danger areas. Plus my experience in traveling around the west is that during fire season virtually everybody is aware and fretting about how dry it is and fearing lightning.

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen such happy people as when in Butte, Montana a few years ago they had a big time downpour in August with no lightning. Everybody was talking about it. So I would imagine that the people In Paradise were on edge to varying degrees.

  6. Griffin:

    Announcing that a siren blast is a test—however “widely” you announce it—doesn’t mean all that much, in my experience. A great many people still don’t get the news, or they forget, or they think it’s a test when it’s the real thing, anyway (forgetting that that one wasn’t announced). Nevertheless I agree that there could be some sort of system using sirens, and it probably would represent an improvement.

    And in that part of California you smell fire and see hazy smoke a lot, so people learn to ignore it (especially at first, when the going would be good) unless it’s close, and unless they receive an evacuation notice. If they left every time they smelled smoke or saw hazy smoke, they’d be practically commuting. Most forest fires stay in the forest till they’re burned out or put out.

  7. Earnest Prole:

    I don’t think the 65 mile figure came from Cicero. I think it came from me, from something I read a while back about where it had started.

    And as I wrote in a recent comment, if Pulga really is something like 7 miles away as the crow flies, that doesn’t mean it burned in a straight line right to Paradise. Although it might have. Depends on wind direction, etc.

    However, if it really was 7 miles away, it’s hard to understand why Paradise wasn’t evacuated immediately, if authorities knew the winds were 50 mph.

  8. Neo,

    Well. on the Washington coast they put up electronic reader boards announcing when the system tests are they put up other signage all over the place it is announced on radio stations in newspapers for days in advance also. Now of course a tsunami warning can be issued for many hours in advance unlike this fire.

    But most places in the west have those fire danger signs all over the place with ‘low’, ‘moderate’, ‘high’ and ‘severe’ warnings so the people should be aware on some level of the situation. My experience has been that people are really aware of the danger at certain times of the year so unless the siren cries wolf too much it could be an effective tool.

    Of course there is also some situations where it all just a perfect storm of fast moving very hot fire hitting very inaccessable area and no matter what was done it was going to be bad.

  9. I think this was the “perfect storm” scenario. Very fast-moving fire, winds sending it exactly the wrong direction, phased evacuation not possible because of the fire speed.

    I read the link on the other thread from Anthony Watts. He moved out of Paradise to Chico after a previous fire scare. The location was a fire trap. Unfortunately, it moved from “potential” to a horrible event.

  10. Griffin:

    This was a perfect storm, and Paradise and the area has “high” fire danger most of the time except during the rather brief rainy season (a rainy season that does not always come).

    If you live in a place where the danger of something is often very high, and nothing all that bad has ever happened, you tend to think it will continue to not happen.

    I do think a siren could be helpful, particularly in an area with poor cell phone service. I wonder why it’s not used more.

  11. I’m with you on the siren idea, Neo, except I imagine the city authorities were afraid it would trigger an everybody-at-once evacuation and gridlock — which is what happened anyhow.

  12. It just sounds like there was not many options here short of spending millions on a much wider road out of town which could have been never needed. And it seems like California doesn’t much like spending big money on projects in rural northern California.

    I have always wondered what it must be like to live in Yreka or Alturas or Susanville and be governed and taxed just like the elites in Palo Alto or Malibu while living an entirely different way of life.

  13. It took me a few seconds to remember. Growing up in a small town, if you heard a siren that sounded like an old fashioned fire siren, it was a fire alert. If the siren pitch and volume went up, and stayed up, it was a tornado alert. We had one test of the newly implemented tornado add-on, of which everyone was aware. We had three or four real tornado alerts, two of which were very close near misses.

    Paradise would have required several sirens given its size. Still it seems like the obvious choice.

  14. Miker,

    Cliff Mass is a very balanced scientist. He definitely believes in man made climate change but he has written several very critical takedowns of the climate alarmists. And they don’t like that much at all.

  15. As to your siren system: I worked 9-1-1 for a small (~16,000) city with a siren system due to a nuclear plant nearby. Even with TV, radio, newspaper and inserts in electric bills of an upcoming test of the system (on a Saturday at noon, and again 30 minutes later), I would still get about a dozen calls from citizens on 9-1-1 when the siren went off (and a few more calls on the regular business line). Some people just never get the word that it is a test.

  16. Ernest Prole:

    Thanks, but I saw that when it was first published, and it made little sense to me.

    For starters, that was one of the sources for my (apparently erroneous) idea that the fire had started around 60-something miles north of Paradise. It says in that WaPo piece that the fire started about 150 miles north of Sacramento. Well, Paradise is about 90 miles north of Sacramento. So I subtracted. If the fire started at a spot that’s really 7 miles from Paradise, that’s a big difference from 60 miles.

    Then the WaPo piece also says the fire was discovered at 6:33 AM, the first firefighters arrive at the scene at 6:43 AM, and the evacuation orders are issued “minutes later.” However, the evacuation order they show (for Pulga, the nearby town) has a timestamp of 10:23 AM, which is about three and half hours later. The article made no sense to me as a timeline, so I disregarded it.

    I saw other articles too, at other sources, and none of them made sense.

  17. Neo, the timestamps on the alerts WaPo published are Eastern time, which is three hours ahead of Pacific time.

  18. Ernest Prole:

    Well, that certainly explains the time discrepancy (although not why they didn’t put “Eastern Time” after it), but not the distance discrepancy. I knew anyway that Pulga was evacuated fairly early on; my real question was about when the call went out to Paradise. I think I got some of the answers in later articles, though, that I quoted in this post.

  19. Neo,

    That Cliff Mass website mentioned by Miker above has a few posts about the fire and why it started and the weather conditions. One of his points is the power should be shut off when the winds kick up. He made the same point last year after the Napa fires. Think that’s going too far personally but it might prevent some fires.

  20. The answer is not to flee from the fire, that obviously cannot be done by so many. The answer is to be prepared to shelter in place underground from the fire. Just like midwesterners once did from tornados. A quick moving fire burns over and past fast enough that people would not have to shelter in place that long. Seperate siren sounds for training and real alerts and all clears prevent confusion and mistaken assumptions. But stupidity cannot be prevented and in life threatening situations, the truly stupid sometimes self-eliminate. Any mountain community that doesn’t learn from this tragedy has themselves to blame.

  21. When we were riding out the Rat Creek fire in Washington in 1994, our best source of info was the Wenatchee, WA AM radio station. The sheriff and fire boss were passing info to them for dissemination to residents near the fire. It was invaluable to us from the minute the fire blew up near our house. We were in a relatively secure situation, so we opted to ride it out. But without the AM radio info we would not have been as informed or been as confident in defending our house.

    Fires on flatter terrain are difficult because only a helicopter can get a perspective of what’s actually happening. When the wind is light the fire creeps along the ground and moves fairly slowly. When the wind picks up and the fire gets up in the crowns of the trees, it is off to the races. A terrifying thing, it moves as fast as the wind, which was quite strong in Butte County. A crowned out forest fire sounds like a huge freight train.

    According to this account: “Satellite images reveal the fury of the Camp Fire. Wind-blown flames raced 12 miles and destroyed half of Paradise in its first four hours as residents were just waking up. Flying embers flew 2.5 miles ahead of the advancing fire front, according to UC Berkeley Landsat analyses.”

    That from: https://www.dailydemocrat.com/2018/11/17/lessons-from-paradise-staying-alive-in-fire-country/

    That would give a speed of about 3 miles an hour, but with the flying embers, there were a lot of fires being started out in advance of the main fire front. Wind direction and speed are big factors in whether a town is in danger, but the wind can shift and things can change quite rapidly.

    In the foothills of California, during fire season, there ought to be a dedicated AM radio station providing fire info to residents. Also, it would be a good idea for each resident to have an evacuation plan and be ready to go. In the Navy we called such advance planning being “forehanded.” It doesn’t hurt to do some fire proofing, as the orchard owner in Paradise did, by building a fire break and keeping his trees watered. Maybe some of these foothill towns will consider fire breaks around their towns. It’s certainly a lot less costly than what has happened to Paradise.

  22. John Moorlach, the state Senator referred to in that article above is a serious guy and his bill was passed unanimously by both houses of the legislature. Then Brown vetoed it. Moorlach is the guy who, as a private practice accountant, predicted the Orange County bankruptcy in 1994. The LA Times printed an editorial dismissing his warning and the bankruptcy came six months later. The bill would have helped create fire breaks around utility lines. The cause of this fire.

  23. Shelter in place. Shelter in place. Shelter in place.

    A cheap shallow box in your yard with a cheap fireproof cover would suffice.

    A mask/filter for smoke inhalation over your face.

    A local siren or cheap, battery-powered, plug-in-the-wall beeper (110+ db) to wake you up.

    In less than ten minutes (three if you hurry) you would be perfectly safe.

    Forest fire fighters go into the field with masks and special fireproof blankets to wrap over themselves for this very reason. A shallow box would be much better.

    In tornado country folks escaped to small root cellars or climbed in water wells

  24. Also at American Digest, a description of the very poor living off the grid in the back country around the area. It sounds like the “missing” list of about 1,000 may be an understatement. These very poor people had no cell service and often no landline service, and would not have received any warning at all.

    http://americandigest.org/wp/bring-out-your-dead/

  25. Shelter in place — like a tornado shelter, but ready for a fire — cement/brick, with a fireproof door, various smoke filter air vents (at least two).

    Much, much higher fire insurance, with insurance folks involved in cost effective ways to save more buildings. Maybe require more brick, higher “fire taxes” on wood houses?
    Also, higher “density taxes” on towns with poor roads that can’t handle emergency evacuation?

    Sounds like a very beautiful place, except for the low risk of a very high damage fire.

    Experimenting with highly watered / flame resistant plant firebreaks?

    There’s lots of possible mitigation solutions, but all require money or inconvenience or both. And willingness to force all to do it.

  26. One of the earlier comments took a stab at calculating the rate the fire moved on Paradise, citing some “facts”. I would like to inform the commenter that a yard is 3 feet… so a distance of 100 yards would measure out at 300 ft, not 900.
    Using the correct length of a yard, covering 300 ft in 3 seconds, works out to be 100 ft/sec, or roughly 70mph. Not that 70 mph is not a rapid rate of advance. [I don’t know the source of the 3 seconds, so all these numbers could be bogus.]

    And, since were are talking football fields, the area of the field, excluding end zones, is 45000 square feet, and an acre is 43,560 sq feet. So take the acreage stat and imagine that many regulation fields….

  27. Big Bill:
    Shelter in place? Better than nothing but worse than evacuation if you can. Many fire-fighters in wildland situations have died when forced to rely on shelter in place. They were trained professionals. Air purifying respirators (APR) don’t remove carbon monoxide, so you are depending on fire conditions to be favorable for your survival. Do you know how to wear an APR? Do you know how to test for a effective face seal? Do you have a beard? If so you are toast (can’t seal a respirator on a bearded face). Remember, your life depends on these things when you shelter in place. Oh, and they had fire retartand (FR) clothing.

  28. Hawaii has a siren system. Primarily for tsunami and hurricane warnings. It is tested the first Monday of every month at 12 noon. This works very well. Everyone knows what is a test and what isn’t. If those sirens go off and it isn’t Monday at noon, we turn on the tv or radio and there will be a public service announcement giving information and instructions. One way I knew the cell phone text warning about a missile was an error – the sirens didn’t go off.

  29. Hi Neo,

    The problem in this part of California, is “conifers”. The needles on these trees contain terpenes and other volatiles, and they are highly flammable, even green.

    In housing developments in forested Paradise, natural conifers were artfully selected for retention, to meet ‘green-belt’ goals, as the streets & home-plots were laid out. This was a mistake; all conifers should have been removed, and broadleaf, deciduous trees should have been planted. It should be illegal outright; should never happen, but it’s cheap and it’s pretty.

    Fire travels very fast, Neo, by “blowing up”. Heat baking the conifers vaporizes flammables, ahead of the actual flames, and then the very air itself combusts with a huge WHOOSH, then the solids in the follow-up tree-combustion goes off with a howling chorus of incineration. The sudden vast release of heat creates a ground-level suction, pulling in more air to oxygenate the tree-fires. The thermal convection updraft sucks small burning debris 100s of feet up (without it burning, since O2 is too low), and then it falls down … now burning vigorously in the fresh oxygen supply.

    That’s how fire sometimes gets outa control like this … leaping in big bounds, in ‘rolling waves’, and also by crowning, running through just the tops of (conifer) trees. Indeed, Neo, the green trees in dry weather can be more dangerous than the beetle-snags, because they contain the volatiles, and fine, loftable needle-debris. Especially, in terms of high-speed, and jumping.

    Wait for it, the Public Service Announcement is coming. “Conifers should not be used for landscaping, in these environs”. It’s a hard-sell, though … you can’t terrorize little kids anymore with horrific 16mm flicks of big fires, taken by urgent & edgy-sounding fire-professionals out on the front-lines of fearsome fires. And it’s cheap, and who doesn’t love nice trees.

    Ted

  30. Ted, your comment is highly descriptive and explanatory. Very well written. Thanks.

  31. Ted Clayton:

    This certainly is NOT my field of expertise, although I’ve been reading up on it. Somewhere in my reading I came across a description that indicated that in the Paradise fire, at least within the town, many of the conifers did not catch fire although the houses did. I’ll try to find it later.

  32. Well Neo, I looked for & quickly found articles asking why the homes burned, and the trees did not. Thank you Julie.

    “Why do houses burn but trees remain?” https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/photos-from-california-wildfires-reveal-lessons-for-b-c-1.4905324

    Because of the smoke, I can’t tell for-sure if these foliage-bearing trees are green, or black. While usually the foliage burns-off, it can also just char-in-place.

    Some Media & people are clearly surprised, that trees are still standing, or that they are intact. Forest fires often consume mainly the fines, or even just mainly the volatilized vapors. In a crowning-fire, there may be areas where the lower part of the tree remains green, and they may recover.

    In a fire that is blowing-up, a burst can fly up … and right across a patch of forest, leaving it mostly unaffected … then fall down on the other side, setting off another giant torch. It’s common, that it hop-scotches.

    Supporting your ‘head-scratching investigation’, it may be that at least in some parts of town, low-intensity fires gradually compromised homes, simply because nobody was there with so-much-as a garden hose, to put-down what otherwise might have been a manageable fire-threat. Without being severe enough to get into the trees at all (this is how natural slow-cool fires work).

    I’m not (at this time) promoting a dropped-the-ball scenario (although that is certainly possible!) … and there are real, practical issues in this explanation. Like crudely, it could take every firefighter in North American to successfully defend every street, block & home in Paradise. And they had to get there, equipped, in under an hour.

    Fire-patterns are not normally even, uniform or regular. The destruction varies. Some spots largely escape. Sustained “solid walls of fire” are usually temporary (they ‘isolate’ themselves, pulling low-lying air “in”, then sending up a huge thermal-convection “plume”). Big fires are very much a million spot-fires, especially (as probably the case here) when bounding or crowning. Bambi will come tottering down your fire-break, after you retreated from too-dangerous conditions, singed but very much alive.

    The authorities must respectfully address the matter of the Missing List, carefully inspecting each ruin, without the Media. Hopefully it’s mostly a fruitless quest … but until they sign off on that, much or most of the town stays off-limits. When it opens up, we will have a whole new round of pics.

    Basically, fire on the ground under low wind moves slowly. You have lots of time. If there is a good breeze, you can see ‘surging & racing’, especially in fingers. Under high winds, and dry conditions, the infamous Santa Anna, new dynamics arise and yeah it can spread too rapidly for Warning Systems, or First Responders. 20-30 mph, easily, and sometimes, or briefly, quite a bit more.

    I’m curious just what did and did not happen inside the town itself … but it is not a mystery how the fire got there so quickly, from someplace else.

    Ted

  33. Thanks, Ted, for the descriptions. Yes, it’s not clear from pictures I have seen whether the conifers standing in Paradise after the fire are dead trees standing or actual survivors. The tops might have burned, it seems to me, and left the trunks in place. If it gets really hot, my understanding is that houses will burn from the inside out.

  34. Thank you Kate for confirming it’s hard to tell if those trees are black-toast, or ok. It does look like there was a LOT of heat, for all those houses to be just gone. Even very ‘good’ house-blazes are not that ‘efficient’.

  35. @ Molly Brown — I grew up in Anchorage, AK (probable target of 2-3 megaton warheads) in the 1960s/70s. The air raid siren was tested every Friday at 3:30pm, so we always knew when it was a test, and basically we all knew that if we heard it any *other* time we were screwed.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>