News Brief
Stay or go? Evacuation versus shelter-in-place in wildfires
Tom Cova, Frank Drews, Laura Siebeneck and Adrian Musters have a paper forthcoming in
Natural Hazards Review that addresses many of the issues in the news regarding the
recent devastating bushfires in Victoria, Australia that have resulted hundreds of fatalities.
The approach in Australia for protecting communities is to avoid ordering mandatory
evacuations in favor of letting people decide whether they want to "prepare, stay
and defend (property) or leave early" when faced with a wildfire. Cova et al. note
that this sets up a difficult trade-off between protecting life (leaving early) and
property (staying) that citizens may not be able to make under the psychological duress
of a first encounter with extreme fire behavior. They also note that the Australian
guideline "structures protect people and people protect structures" is presented too
much like a law and may have misled people into believing that there was little risk
in harboring in their homes. Thirdly, they note that the advice to "leave early" may
not include enough content regarding the timing of the arrival of a fast-moving
wildfire for people to be able to make an informed decision about when to leave.
Related link:
Pre-print of Cova et al. paper
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