![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I'm cutting this for c&p-ing some news articles behind paywalls. Nothing graphic described. Two medium-length articles explaining some of what went wrong and why, plus some highly dubious-sounding justifications from city officials. Plus commentary by me. Please chime in with thoughts or further info, if you've found any.
To be clear: I think some people probably would have died in Paradise even under perfect emergency management. That was a horrific fire that moved incredibly fast. But it should been a person or two who fell through the cracks the way people do - an isolated person who got missed, someone who ran back to fetch something, etc. It should not have been, as is looking likely, over a hundred.
***
From the LA Times:
When the Camp fire barreled toward this Sierra foothill town last Thursday morning, officials had a crucial choice to make right way: How much of Paradise should be evacuated?
The decision was complicated by history and topography. Paradise sits on a hilltop and is hemmed in by canyons, with only four narrow winding routes to flee to safety. During its last major fire in 2008, authorities evacuated so many people that roads became dangerously clogged.
So this time, they decided not to immediately undergo a full-scale evacuation, hoping to get residents out of neighborhoods closest to the fires first before the roads became gridlocked.
But it soon became clear that the fire was moving too fast for that plan, and that the whole town was in jeopardy. A full-scale evacuation order was issued at 9:17 a.m., but by then the fire was already consuming the town.
At least 56 people were killed — most of them in their homes, some trying to flee in their cars and others outside, desperately seeking shelter from the flames. More than 10,000 structures were lost in what is by far the worst wildfire in California history.
It’s unclear how much a different evacuation strategy would have changed the outcome of the fire, which was fueled by intense wind gusts of up to 52 mph and record dry vegetation in an area notoriously vulnerable to fires and wind-blown embers.
But the level of destruction and death is sure to make Paradise a grim lesson for agencies trying to improve emergency alerts and evacuations from fires as well as floods, mudslides and other natural disasters.
The death toll from natural disasters in California in the last year has been enormous, with nearly 40 killed in the wine country and Mendocino County fires and more than 20 in the Montecito mudslides. Officials acknowledged shortcomings in the efforts to get people out of harm’s way.
In the chaos of the Paradise fire, many residents said, they never got warnings by phone from authorities to leave. Some said they got warnings from police driving through their streets using loudspeakers. Others got texts from neighbors. But few said they got official text alerts or phone calls from the government.
The fire was first reported near the community of Pulga — about seven miles from Paradise — about 6:30 a.m. By 7:35 a.m., it had reached the nearby hamlet of Concow.
[Rachel note: The notably missing information here is when anyone should have realized that Paradise was in danger. I don't know the conditions (geography, wind, etc) enough to say whether, for instance, Paradise should have gotten a voluntary or mandatory evacuation alert at 6:30, or if there were legitimate reasons to believe it was not in danger at that point. I would like an objective assessment by a fire expert on when any alert at all should have been issued to Paradise, when/if it should have been voluntary, and when it should have been mandatory.]
The first evacuation order for Paradise came at 8 a.m., a minute after the first flames were spotted in town.
[Rachel note: WTF! There definitely should have been an evacuation alert - voluntary at least - well before the town actually caught fire, based on proximity and wind.]
The order was limited to the eastern side of Paradise. The hope was to get the residents closest to fire out immediately, with the rest of the town to follow if needed.
But the fire was simply moving too fast.
“The fire had already outrun us,” said John Messina, California Department of Fire and Forestry Protection battalion chief for Butte County.
The evacuation orders were sent using a phone system called CodeRed, which covers all landlines as well as cellphone numbers voluntarily submitted by residents. But the system doesn’t cover all phones in the town. “In the town of Paradise, I think we’d be lucky to say 25% or 30%” of phone lines are in the system — and that’s after local officials urge residents to sign up, said Jim Broshears, who directs Paradise’s emergency operations center.
[Rachel: This is why life-or-death alerts should not be opt-in or even voluntary.]
Also, the system can reach only so many phones per hour. “I can’t give you the raw numbers, but there’s a capacity per hour of calls. So CodeRed can’t [make] 12,000 calls at once. It’s really fast, but not this fast,” Broshears said.
[Rachel: Then maybe you should have a system that can cover the entire population. WTF!]
These types of systems have been criticized because they reach so few people. Instead, some safety experts have advocated using the federal government’s Wireless Emergency Alert system, which sends Amber Alert-style warnings to cellphones within a certain geographical area. But the system was not used during several California disasters, including the wine country fires and the heavy flooding that hit San Jose.
James Gore, chairman of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, said government is failing when officials don’t do a good job of communicating an incoming hazard.
“If people are already getting word on Facebook, and there’s nothing coming out of your government, then you’ve failed,” said Gore, whose county has begun to buy fire cameras that can sense the movement of blazes by heat and is seeking to purchase air sirens for parts of the county without cell coverage. “If you’re more worried about the crisis you could cause than the crisis that is upon you, then you have failed.”
In Paradise, Broshears said officials did not employ the Wireless Emergency Alert system because they initially wanted to stagger the evacuations by neighborhood.
[Rachel: This is not unreasonable given that there was essentially only one way out of the town. However, given that, then they should have started evacuating earlier so the last neighborhoods could still get out in time.]
He also said that Amber Alert-style alerts do “not go to every phone at the same time.”
According to the Federal Communications Commission, Wireless Emergency Alerts are broadcast to coverage areas that best approximate the zone of an emergency; mobile devices in the alert zone will receive the alert. There has been criticism that the geographical targeting of the system is not terribly precise, and in late 2019, wireless carriers are supposed to improve geo-targeting of the alerts.
During the recent test of the presidential alert distributed through the Wireless Emergency Alert system, the average delay in users’ receiving a text message was about 22 seconds.
Because of its vulnerability to fire, Paradise has debated the best evacuation strategy for years.
The idea of staggering evacuations was discussed in the wake of the 2008 fire that burned dozens of homes, county documents reviewed by The Times show. After the fire, some officials felt that residents were “over-evacuated” and that that needlessly clogged roads.
But the documents also show several instances in which county emergency officials warned that they might have to quickly evacuate the entire town.
Many Paradise residents said they were baffled by the lack of a warning.
“I assumed if something were to happen, there’d be an alert on your cellphone,” said Alexandria Wilson, 21. Neither she nor any of her 10 relatives now packed into a home in Applegate who all lost their homes in Paradise had ever heard of Butte County's CodeRed emergency alert program.
Only two of them received warnings and those were from a police officer driving down the road telling people to evacuate.
Instead, Wilson’s 10-year-old brother, Eden, was coordinating an evacuation effort. Savvy with a cellphone, he was texting and calling everyone and telling them to rendezvous at a Burger King in Chico.
“Nobody should have to get a call from a 10-year-old,” said Jacob Golden, Wilson's boyfriend.
***
***
From Fox40 (yes, I know, but this seems like decent reporting and it has some valuable info I didn't see elsewhere):
Brynn Parrott Chatfield saw the smoke rising above the pine trees near her home in Paradise, California. When she heard the trees blow up and saw the huge pieces of ash, she knew it was time to get out.
Chatfield hopped in her car and drove through fire and smoke to safety, a harrowing journey that she filmed from the driver’s seat.
“Heavenly Father, please help us. Please help us to be safe,” she pleaded in the video.
Though she managed to escape, she never did receive an emergency alert to her phone telling her to watch out for the oncoming fire.
Brad Weldon, also from Paradise, did get a phone alert. But he said it came as he was already fighting off the flames surrounding his home.
Their experiences reflect a widespread issue for residents in Paradise and surrounding Butte County: Many people did not receive emergency alert warnings, and some who did received them too late.
Instead, they learned of the danger not from authorities but through their own eyes and ears, or from concerned friends and family.
In a press conference on Tuesday, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea defended the county’s use of the emergency alert system during the fire. He said the situation was “extraordinarily chaotic and rapidly moving” and so it took time for fire experts to get to the scene, determine the fire’s direction and warn the affected people — time they just didn’t have.
“There were notifications sent out, but as I said over and over again, this fire was moving so rapidly we couldn’t keep ahead of it,” Honea said.
[Rachel: If the fire is that fast and out of control, every town in the vicinity should at least be alerted.]
Paradise Mayor Jody Jones said landline phones are automatically enrolled in the county’s alert system, but cell phones have to be opted in to get the alerts. She said they have conducted drives to get people to register, but she wasn’t sure how many residents signed up.
“I got a phone call, I got texts on my cell phone. My husband got a phone call on the landline,” she told CNN. “So that’s the kind of notification people would get. If they went outside they could see what was happening also.”
[Rachel: 1) THE FUCK? 2) Paradise was largely a place people retired to. Disabled/sick/very elderly people are not going outside to scan the skies at 6:00 AM in case of fire! 3) If you can see your town is on fire just by going outside, it's already too late.]
The fire’s rapid spread through the town of Paradise and beyond left at least 56 people dead and destroyed thousands of homes and structures, making it the most destructive and deadliest blaze in state history.
On Wednesday, the Butte County sheriff published a list of more than a hundred people unaccounted for and still missing from the Camp Fire. The blaze, which has burned 140,000 acres, remains just 40% contained.
Honea said that, for now, Butte County would continue to focus on assisting CalFire on fighting the Camp Fire. Once the fire is contained, they will go back and look closer into the emergency alert system, he said.
“We’re getting a lot of requests and calls from people who want us to spend a lot of time going back and collecting data and there will be a time for that, but right now I need to focus on the fight in front of us,” Honea said.
As Honea noted, the speed of the fire took everyone by surprise and left residents of Paradise scrambling to escape in car and on foot.
The Camp Fire charred 20,000 acres last Thursday in less than 14 hours. Its most significant growth period was early Thursday afternoon, when it grew 10,000 acres in about 90 minutes — burning the equivalent of more than one football field every second during that time.
“We did our absolute best in terms of Amber-style alert, we used emergency mass notification system as well as our efforts to notify people when we’re in the communities. We employed that,” Honea said.
Honea offered several other explanations for why the alerts did not reach people in harm’s way.
He said the fire took place in a remote area where cell phone service may not be great. He also said that some people who received the warning may not have acted immediately to get out, and suggested that people may have been lulled into a false sense of security regarding fires.
“I don’t think it would be appropriate to draw the conclusion that because (bodies) were found in their house, you can automatically assume they were not notified,” he said. “It is possible that they were notified but they chose not to heed the warning and we have heard of stories like that.”
‘For the most part, our plan worked’
Mayor Jones said that the fire simply moved too quickly, especially compared to 2008’s devastating fire season.
“I mean, it just happened so fast. There wasn’t time to give anybody longer. In 2008, we had three hours between the first notice and the mandatory evacuation. We had three hours to pack up stuff,” she said.
This time, though? “We had no time at all. Maybe five minutes,” she added.
[Rachel: Right, so what was going on between the fire at Pulgas at 6:30 AM and when everyone had five minutes to run by 8:00 AM?]
About 26,000 people live in Paradise, some 85 miles north of Sacramento. Jones estimated that about 80 to 90% of the town was destroyed.
Still, despite the issue with the alert system, she defended the evacuation plan, calling it “organized chaos.”
“It did take time to get everybody through just because so many people were evacuated at the same time,” she said. “But I think for the most part, our plan worked. If we hadn’t had that plan, it would have been awful.”
Last October, officials in Northern California faced similar criticism from residents who said they learned of the fire by the smell of smoke or noise from their pets rather than from an emergency alert.
At the time, Kelly Huston, the deputy director for California’s Office of Emergency Service, said alerts and warnings happen on a local level, not a state level.
“They decide what are the appropriate alerts for their population,” Houston said.
[Rachel: That is a BAD system. I'm normally in favor of more local control but the current situation is demonstrating why we need a statewide system.
I'm currently leaning toward a combination of automatic, no opting out phone alerts, sirens, and a siren-like loudspeaker system like they have in Japan that can actually tell people what's going on and where to go. A lot of it could be pre-recorded for various eventualities, which would allow it to be broadcast in multiple languages. You could use a live person and google translate for in-the-moment specifics.)
***
To be clear: I think some people probably would have died in Paradise even under perfect emergency management. That was a horrific fire that moved incredibly fast. But it should been a person or two who fell through the cracks the way people do - an isolated person who got missed, someone who ran back to fetch something, etc. It should not have been, as is looking likely, over a hundred.
***
From the LA Times:
When the Camp fire barreled toward this Sierra foothill town last Thursday morning, officials had a crucial choice to make right way: How much of Paradise should be evacuated?
The decision was complicated by history and topography. Paradise sits on a hilltop and is hemmed in by canyons, with only four narrow winding routes to flee to safety. During its last major fire in 2008, authorities evacuated so many people that roads became dangerously clogged.
So this time, they decided not to immediately undergo a full-scale evacuation, hoping to get residents out of neighborhoods closest to the fires first before the roads became gridlocked.
But it soon became clear that the fire was moving too fast for that plan, and that the whole town was in jeopardy. A full-scale evacuation order was issued at 9:17 a.m., but by then the fire was already consuming the town.
At least 56 people were killed — most of them in their homes, some trying to flee in their cars and others outside, desperately seeking shelter from the flames. More than 10,000 structures were lost in what is by far the worst wildfire in California history.
It’s unclear how much a different evacuation strategy would have changed the outcome of the fire, which was fueled by intense wind gusts of up to 52 mph and record dry vegetation in an area notoriously vulnerable to fires and wind-blown embers.
But the level of destruction and death is sure to make Paradise a grim lesson for agencies trying to improve emergency alerts and evacuations from fires as well as floods, mudslides and other natural disasters.
The death toll from natural disasters in California in the last year has been enormous, with nearly 40 killed in the wine country and Mendocino County fires and more than 20 in the Montecito mudslides. Officials acknowledged shortcomings in the efforts to get people out of harm’s way.
In the chaos of the Paradise fire, many residents said, they never got warnings by phone from authorities to leave. Some said they got warnings from police driving through their streets using loudspeakers. Others got texts from neighbors. But few said they got official text alerts or phone calls from the government.
The fire was first reported near the community of Pulga — about seven miles from Paradise — about 6:30 a.m. By 7:35 a.m., it had reached the nearby hamlet of Concow.
[Rachel note: The notably missing information here is when anyone should have realized that Paradise was in danger. I don't know the conditions (geography, wind, etc) enough to say whether, for instance, Paradise should have gotten a voluntary or mandatory evacuation alert at 6:30, or if there were legitimate reasons to believe it was not in danger at that point. I would like an objective assessment by a fire expert on when any alert at all should have been issued to Paradise, when/if it should have been voluntary, and when it should have been mandatory.]
The first evacuation order for Paradise came at 8 a.m., a minute after the first flames were spotted in town.
[Rachel note: WTF! There definitely should have been an evacuation alert - voluntary at least - well before the town actually caught fire, based on proximity and wind.]
The order was limited to the eastern side of Paradise. The hope was to get the residents closest to fire out immediately, with the rest of the town to follow if needed.
But the fire was simply moving too fast.
“The fire had already outrun us,” said John Messina, California Department of Fire and Forestry Protection battalion chief for Butte County.
The evacuation orders were sent using a phone system called CodeRed, which covers all landlines as well as cellphone numbers voluntarily submitted by residents. But the system doesn’t cover all phones in the town. “In the town of Paradise, I think we’d be lucky to say 25% or 30%” of phone lines are in the system — and that’s after local officials urge residents to sign up, said Jim Broshears, who directs Paradise’s emergency operations center.
[Rachel: This is why life-or-death alerts should not be opt-in or even voluntary.]
Also, the system can reach only so many phones per hour. “I can’t give you the raw numbers, but there’s a capacity per hour of calls. So CodeRed can’t [make] 12,000 calls at once. It’s really fast, but not this fast,” Broshears said.
[Rachel: Then maybe you should have a system that can cover the entire population. WTF!]
These types of systems have been criticized because they reach so few people. Instead, some safety experts have advocated using the federal government’s Wireless Emergency Alert system, which sends Amber Alert-style warnings to cellphones within a certain geographical area. But the system was not used during several California disasters, including the wine country fires and the heavy flooding that hit San Jose.
James Gore, chairman of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, said government is failing when officials don’t do a good job of communicating an incoming hazard.
“If people are already getting word on Facebook, and there’s nothing coming out of your government, then you’ve failed,” said Gore, whose county has begun to buy fire cameras that can sense the movement of blazes by heat and is seeking to purchase air sirens for parts of the county without cell coverage. “If you’re more worried about the crisis you could cause than the crisis that is upon you, then you have failed.”
In Paradise, Broshears said officials did not employ the Wireless Emergency Alert system because they initially wanted to stagger the evacuations by neighborhood.
[Rachel: This is not unreasonable given that there was essentially only one way out of the town. However, given that, then they should have started evacuating earlier so the last neighborhoods could still get out in time.]
He also said that Amber Alert-style alerts do “not go to every phone at the same time.”
According to the Federal Communications Commission, Wireless Emergency Alerts are broadcast to coverage areas that best approximate the zone of an emergency; mobile devices in the alert zone will receive the alert. There has been criticism that the geographical targeting of the system is not terribly precise, and in late 2019, wireless carriers are supposed to improve geo-targeting of the alerts.
During the recent test of the presidential alert distributed through the Wireless Emergency Alert system, the average delay in users’ receiving a text message was about 22 seconds.
Because of its vulnerability to fire, Paradise has debated the best evacuation strategy for years.
The idea of staggering evacuations was discussed in the wake of the 2008 fire that burned dozens of homes, county documents reviewed by The Times show. After the fire, some officials felt that residents were “over-evacuated” and that that needlessly clogged roads.
But the documents also show several instances in which county emergency officials warned that they might have to quickly evacuate the entire town.
Many Paradise residents said they were baffled by the lack of a warning.
“I assumed if something were to happen, there’d be an alert on your cellphone,” said Alexandria Wilson, 21. Neither she nor any of her 10 relatives now packed into a home in Applegate who all lost their homes in Paradise had ever heard of Butte County's CodeRed emergency alert program.
Only two of them received warnings and those were from a police officer driving down the road telling people to evacuate.
Instead, Wilson’s 10-year-old brother, Eden, was coordinating an evacuation effort. Savvy with a cellphone, he was texting and calling everyone and telling them to rendezvous at a Burger King in Chico.
“Nobody should have to get a call from a 10-year-old,” said Jacob Golden, Wilson's boyfriend.
***
***
From Fox40 (yes, I know, but this seems like decent reporting and it has some valuable info I didn't see elsewhere):
Brynn Parrott Chatfield saw the smoke rising above the pine trees near her home in Paradise, California. When she heard the trees blow up and saw the huge pieces of ash, she knew it was time to get out.
Chatfield hopped in her car and drove through fire and smoke to safety, a harrowing journey that she filmed from the driver’s seat.
“Heavenly Father, please help us. Please help us to be safe,” she pleaded in the video.
Though she managed to escape, she never did receive an emergency alert to her phone telling her to watch out for the oncoming fire.
Brad Weldon, also from Paradise, did get a phone alert. But he said it came as he was already fighting off the flames surrounding his home.
Their experiences reflect a widespread issue for residents in Paradise and surrounding Butte County: Many people did not receive emergency alert warnings, and some who did received them too late.
Instead, they learned of the danger not from authorities but through their own eyes and ears, or from concerned friends and family.
In a press conference on Tuesday, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea defended the county’s use of the emergency alert system during the fire. He said the situation was “extraordinarily chaotic and rapidly moving” and so it took time for fire experts to get to the scene, determine the fire’s direction and warn the affected people — time they just didn’t have.
“There were notifications sent out, but as I said over and over again, this fire was moving so rapidly we couldn’t keep ahead of it,” Honea said.
[Rachel: If the fire is that fast and out of control, every town in the vicinity should at least be alerted.]
Paradise Mayor Jody Jones said landline phones are automatically enrolled in the county’s alert system, but cell phones have to be opted in to get the alerts. She said they have conducted drives to get people to register, but she wasn’t sure how many residents signed up.
“I got a phone call, I got texts on my cell phone. My husband got a phone call on the landline,” she told CNN. “So that’s the kind of notification people would get. If they went outside they could see what was happening also.”
[Rachel: 1) THE FUCK? 2) Paradise was largely a place people retired to. Disabled/sick/very elderly people are not going outside to scan the skies at 6:00 AM in case of fire! 3) If you can see your town is on fire just by going outside, it's already too late.]
The fire’s rapid spread through the town of Paradise and beyond left at least 56 people dead and destroyed thousands of homes and structures, making it the most destructive and deadliest blaze in state history.
On Wednesday, the Butte County sheriff published a list of more than a hundred people unaccounted for and still missing from the Camp Fire. The blaze, which has burned 140,000 acres, remains just 40% contained.
Honea said that, for now, Butte County would continue to focus on assisting CalFire on fighting the Camp Fire. Once the fire is contained, they will go back and look closer into the emergency alert system, he said.
“We’re getting a lot of requests and calls from people who want us to spend a lot of time going back and collecting data and there will be a time for that, but right now I need to focus on the fight in front of us,” Honea said.
As Honea noted, the speed of the fire took everyone by surprise and left residents of Paradise scrambling to escape in car and on foot.
The Camp Fire charred 20,000 acres last Thursday in less than 14 hours. Its most significant growth period was early Thursday afternoon, when it grew 10,000 acres in about 90 minutes — burning the equivalent of more than one football field every second during that time.
“We did our absolute best in terms of Amber-style alert, we used emergency mass notification system as well as our efforts to notify people when we’re in the communities. We employed that,” Honea said.
Honea offered several other explanations for why the alerts did not reach people in harm’s way.
He said the fire took place in a remote area where cell phone service may not be great. He also said that some people who received the warning may not have acted immediately to get out, and suggested that people may have been lulled into a false sense of security regarding fires.
“I don’t think it would be appropriate to draw the conclusion that because (bodies) were found in their house, you can automatically assume they were not notified,” he said. “It is possible that they were notified but they chose not to heed the warning and we have heard of stories like that.”
‘For the most part, our plan worked’
Mayor Jones said that the fire simply moved too quickly, especially compared to 2008’s devastating fire season.
“I mean, it just happened so fast. There wasn’t time to give anybody longer. In 2008, we had three hours between the first notice and the mandatory evacuation. We had three hours to pack up stuff,” she said.
This time, though? “We had no time at all. Maybe five minutes,” she added.
[Rachel: Right, so what was going on between the fire at Pulgas at 6:30 AM and when everyone had five minutes to run by 8:00 AM?]
About 26,000 people live in Paradise, some 85 miles north of Sacramento. Jones estimated that about 80 to 90% of the town was destroyed.
Still, despite the issue with the alert system, she defended the evacuation plan, calling it “organized chaos.”
“It did take time to get everybody through just because so many people were evacuated at the same time,” she said. “But I think for the most part, our plan worked. If we hadn’t had that plan, it would have been awful.”
Last October, officials in Northern California faced similar criticism from residents who said they learned of the fire by the smell of smoke or noise from their pets rather than from an emergency alert.
At the time, Kelly Huston, the deputy director for California’s Office of Emergency Service, said alerts and warnings happen on a local level, not a state level.
“They decide what are the appropriate alerts for their population,” Houston said.
[Rachel: That is a BAD system. I'm normally in favor of more local control but the current situation is demonstrating why we need a statewide system.
I'm currently leaning toward a combination of automatic, no opting out phone alerts, sirens, and a siren-like loudspeaker system like they have in Japan that can actually tell people what's going on and where to go. A lot of it could be pre-recorded for various eventualities, which would allow it to be broadcast in multiple languages. You could use a live person and google translate for in-the-moment specifics.)
***
Tags:
From:
no subject
I suspect there will be wrongful death lawsuits over this, and frankly they seem like they have a pretty good basis so far. It's true that cell service in Paradise sucked and that many of the elderly residents didn't have cell phones. All of which is even more reason to not be conservative in your evacuation declarations.
From:
no subject
A town in a fire zone with spotty cell service and many residents without cell phones needs a siren system that also includes vibration and flashing lights. AND an Amber Alert type system. People also take things more seriously when their phones are going off, so are everyone else's, AND a siren is blaring. Gets a nice sense of urgency.
The one problem I see with a siren system, and it's a big one, is that it will terrify pets, who will then hide and be hard to catch, thus delaying evacuation for everyone who has this problem. The only way around it I see is a massive education campaign about this directed at pet owners, and to send the Amber alerts before the sirens if possible, so people know to cram their cats in a carrier before the loud noises start.
Actually, that part might make sense as an opt-in - pet owners could sign up for very early warnings, knowing there's a chance they may not actually have to evacuate, so they can get one, secure their pets, and then wait to see what happens. I'd definitely be up for periodically locking my cats in the bathroom with the carrier, then letting them out at the all-clear.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
Are any of your local politicians in a position to push for these changes?
From:
no subject
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
A secondary issue is how many communities like Paradise and the Oakland Hills have sufficient roads to be able to evacuate in an emergency.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
However, a better alert system which is actually used would help issues like people thinking they're better off running than staying in their cars, or nobody hitting the road till everything on the side of the road is burning.
From:
no subject
Santa Barbara has a good warning system in terms of getting the word out (I don't know whether they use the federal system or something else). We were never personally in the mandatory evac zone for the Thomas fire but we got all the warning messages.
As regards the 90-minute delay, I wonder if there was just incompetence in terms of realizing how fast it was moving and how bad it was. With Montecito, most of the people who died were not in the mandatory evacuation zone and by the time they realized it was going to be in trouble and sent out the alerts, it was too late.
"If they went outside they could see what was happening also.”
... yeah, I don't go outside at 6am (I'm even often awake at that time due to small person) to see if maybe there might be a fire happening today, wtf.
From:
no subject
Montecito: you mean the deaths by mudslides, right?
(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
So much this, very very much this.
From:
no subject
The other obvious one is the building code. No flammable roofing materials, and so on. (I know there was a big wrangle about this in Fort McMurray after it mostly burned down; I don't know what the outcome was.)
I'd keep them politically distinct because there's likely to be way more opposition to the building code.
From:
no subject
The other big thing in FortMac was that the building boom had been so big and fast that almost all of the edges of town lacked the necessary fire-breaks, and I know that's getting a lot more attention this time around.
From:
no subject
(Germany occasionally has fires -- the biggest one in 1975, with a number of firefighters dying -- but even when it's been dry its stone, brick, or concrete houses as such don't burn.)
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
Honea and Jones are blaming everything but a dog that ate their notes. Terrified of being found responsible for fucking up, out of their depth.
San Francisco has a city-wide earthquake warning system with loudspeakers that make an announcement that it is a test (monthly testing) in several languages, which is pretty funny because when an earthquake starts you know what your problem is. I suppose they could use it for fire or tsunami (though only the outer, Pacific-facing areas would be affected).
I don't know what Australian state governments do. They have a similar problem set with fire/flood landscapes.
From:
no subject
I.
Whuh.
My head hurts now.
From:
no subject
Okay, this made me laugh. Because yeah, it's kind of hard to mistake an earthquake for anything else. The idea of having that going on while a loudspeaker outside your window tells you there's an earthquake happening is actually pretty hilarious in a weird dystopian way.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:From:
re alert systems
From:
Re: re alert systems
Re: re alert systems
From:Re: re alert systems
From:From:
no subject
Am I misreading something, or is that just flagrantly untrue? I thought the first article was pretty clear that they used CodeRed but not the Amber alert-style system.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
In NZ Civil Defence is in charge of disaster response. They have a mobile phone alert capacity and there’s actually a test of it coming up in ten days or so. We have tsunami sirens and marked tsunami zones BUT our series of major earthquakes over the last ten years have shown how crap people are at responding to anything the first time (my sister lives in a tsunami zone and my father is a seismologist. It still took my sister and her family way too much time to decide to evacuate after the 2016 7.8 quake, but fortunately the tsunami mostly hit uninhabited areas). Earthquake early warning systems would be great, but there are political arguments about cost (I think there’s pilot running in California? Japan and Mexico have them. Up to a minute advance notification for magnitude 5 plus).
People need systems that deal with the fact that people will often only learn from experience - and by then it may be too late.
From:
no subject
They're civil defense sirens. EVERYONE had them, at some point. The theory was they'd go off if you were going to get nuked, except even during the Cold War the midwest quickly realized they worked really well to warn people about tornadoes. Did California get rid of theirs in 1990? Or has it just not occurred to anyone to repurpose them?
Also, I live basically next to a siren. My cats don't freak out when it goes off, unless I stupidly left my window open. (We also have a weather radio, which we bought at our old house, but we stuck it in the basement because there is NO WAY IN HELL we will ever sleep through the siren here unless we are dead. Possibly even if we are dead.)
From:
no subject
The thing about cell phone location data is that 911 systems (and I'm guessing emergency warning systems) get this totally garbled and useless data about where your phone is, which is just ridiculous given that freaking Pokemon Go knows EXACTLY where I am. The technology lag here is beyond stupid. They have the ability to identify all the smartphones in my zip code (that are on, and not in airplane mode), crank up the volume, and make them go WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP while vibrating like crazy to get everyone's attention. And a lifethreatening wildfire is the BEST POSSIBLE SITUATION in which to use this capability.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
I've since lived in very real risk of both tornadoes and hurricanes, but fire is still absolutely, hands down, my biggest natural disaster nightmare, and the one horrible news story I can never turn away from. But this, this is beyond horrible and into indefensible. If we can't find a way to stop the fires getting worse, than we owe it to ourselves to find a way to make them more survivable, with better systems of warnings and evacuations. Also, OMG buried power lines EVERYWHERE please!
From:
no subject
One question I have: does the city or county even have access to the FEMA/Amber Alert system? That Hawaii alert about the not-missile attack was on the FEMA system, right?
From:
no subject
I'm still trying to figure out exactly what happened but it's sounding like they had access to Amber Alert but didn't use it. Or did you mean the Presidential Alert? (Sorry, this is all way more macro-level stuff than I normally deal with, as I'm sure was obvious from my post.)
I'm not sure what system Hawaii was on. That's actually a very good question because that particular debacle did an incredibly good job of alerting virtually everyone in a very large area. Unfortunate that it was a false "YOU'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!" alert, but the "getting people alerted" part of the system apparently worked perfectly.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
In California, when the town siren goes off, does it mean "earthquake alert" (stay indoors) or "wildfire alert" (get the hell out of town)?
(no subject)
From:From:
no subject
I was at work during the test of the presidential text alert. I didn't get one. Neither did the students in my class. Neither did the instructor who hapened to teach the class that met in the room after mine. At the time, I was a little relieved--since it got tested shortly after the campus emergency system test and the Great California Shakeout, which also come through as blaringly loud emergency alerts.
That said, in the case of an actual emegency, I would very much like to get the alerts. These disasters are a good reminder to look into why I didn't get the message.
( At the time, I was just happy I had remembered the other two and reminded my students so that they did not freak, which is how that usually goes. They jump; I jump. We all remember a split second too late that this noise was a scheduked event we knew about,)
The most enraging part of the Camp Fire deaths us that we should have learned from the wine country fires and, apparently, did not.