Some California towns at risk of fire have few escape routes

By MEGAN DISKIN, Ventura County Star; and EVAN WYLOGE, Palm Springs Desert Sun, 26 April 2019




The ratio of people to exit routes doesn't account for all the complexities of an actual evacuation, experts say, but it does serve as a shorthand for evaluating evacuation efficacy.


"If that happens here, we're going to have the same kinds of issues," said Rodefer, a Tuolumne County supervisor. "There's a lot of anxiety in the foothills now because of the Camp Fire."


In Los Angeles County, an area already known for gridlock, the city of Glendale straddles the Verdugo Mountains with neighborhoods, schools, and hiking trails carved into its base. The city's 2008 emergency plan identified them as potential brush fire zones.

The roads can be narrow and some communities have only one way in and out. The plan notes that these conditions could make evacuation and emergency response difficult, but years of construction and development have made any kind of road widening "physically impossible" in those areas, city spokesman Dan Bell said.

The city's police and fire agencies have conducted outreach in these communities and are strict about defensible space around homes. There's also a new, targeted alert system.

"I think the only concern is people not evacuating when we ask them to evacuate," he said.

Plus, Bell said, the area hasn't seen a major wildfire in some time.

But it's the big one that worries Glendale resident James Ward, 62. For 32 years he's lived in Chevy Chase Canyon, a community of 1,600 homes in a cleft of the San Rafael Hills, which the city has also identified as a potential brush fire zone.

There are only two-lane roads that run through the canyon, with a single access point for many streets and only a few main arteries that let people out. But some neighbors don't know all the ways out, Ward said.

"If 80% or 60% of the people thought the only way was Chevy Chase (Drive) and all the emergency vehicles were coming up, yes that's gonna be an issue," Ward said.

Evacuation routes came up at an annual community meeting in March with the police and fire departments because residents saw the tragedy in Paradise and had the same fears, Ward said. The co-president of the Chevy Chase Estates Association said the public safety officials acknowledged their fears but "their message was: be aware of your surroundings and if we ask you to leave, leave."

California officially adopted fire code standards for roads in the 1990s, although they had been used in some areas for decades before that. They set rules for things like grades, road surfaces, passing areas, signage on dead-ends and "critical" secondary access to any subdivision, said Daniel Berlant, assistant deputy director with Cal Fire's office of the state fire marshal.



"We're gonna see a lot of bad things happen I think ... before we do something for communities that we did for buildings," said Cova, director of the University of Utah's Center for Natural and Technological Hazards.

Still, Cova and other experts see road capacity as just one element of a healthy evacuation system. Timely evacuation orders, residents' willingness to obey them, traffic pinch points at intersections beyond the community and many other factors can also be a matter of life and death.

And road capacities can be sufficient, Cova said, if evacuations are gradual or limited. It's when everyone tries to leave at once that escape routes are quickly overwhelmed.



Malibu transplant Kassidy Jones, 40, said that's exactly what happened when he and his family fled their home in the city's Corral Canyon neighborhood the morning of Nov. 9. As the Woolsey Fire bore down, they packed two cars full of belongings and drove south down the windy, two-lane road to scenic Pacific Coast Highway. At the bottom of the canyon, they found bumper-to-bumper traffic.

"I don't think there's really another way out, especially because the fire was coming down the mountain," Jones said. "There were just so many people. PCH can't handle it."

Work brought the Texas native to Los Angeles, but he never liked the city much. That's why he moved his family to the remote neighborhood where his backyard met the sprawling canyon and gave him a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean.

Now there he was stuck in traffic. He couldn't go north. The flames were coming from that direction — just like in previous fires. Plus, north of Jones, the canyon road eventually empties into a network of hiking trails.

At the bottom of the canyon, it took 20 minutes to even turn onto the highway, Jones said. He parked one of the vehicles along PCH and planned to leave it there, figuring the fire wouldn't spread that far. There, Jones rejoined his wife and their children, ages 6 and 8.

The kids became restless as the family's car crept along the highway for two hours to go just two miles. Finally, they stopped at a park to stretch their legs, go to the bathroom and have some snacks.


"Before it was flowing west then it went south. Our neighborhood was on the western edge of where the fire went. Unfortunately, it got our house," Jones said.



For others like Jones, who choose to live in places prone to fire, whether in remote parts of rural California or in the "urban-wildland interface" that buffers California's rugged wilderness and dense cities, a similar situation could await.



There, the number of people living in the "very high fire hazard safety zone" per roadway lanes out is almost three times the number for Paradise.

Interim South Lake Tahoe Fire Department Battalion Chief Jim Drennan said he wasn't surprised to find out his community is in one of the most precarious fire evacuation locations in the state , given the small number of roads in and out of the Tahoe Basin.


"The mindset here is: There's no earthly way you're moving the entire vacation population out of the basin all at once," Drennan said. "If you have just one quirk, you're going to end up with a lot of people stuck on the roads."

The previous fire chief there wrote in a 2018 op-ed that it's not a question of "if" but "when" a major fire will hit the area, and he pointed out the limited evacuation routes as a major concern.





The analysis identified some places in California where fires have already combined with jammed roadways, killing drivers attempting to flee. Paradise and its neighbor Magalia were among the areas identified as a populous area with limited routes out, and 2018's Camp Fire proved the point. There, city and county officials had planned on having motorists evacuate using five two-lane roads and one four-lane road leading out of town. But fire forced officials to close three of those routes, further clogging the remaining roads, Paradise Mayor Jody Jones said.




Many Californians clearly understand the risks. They've lived through wildfire evacuations, or have watched others. But that's not enough to pry them from the places they love.

Greg Meneshian, 53, is one. He's rebuilding the Bell Canyon home destroyed last year by the Woolsey Fire.


There's only one access point for the neighborhood of 750.


"They were looking to me for answers as if I lived through this before," Meneshian said. But he was in disbelief.




"It was really a scramble for our lives," Meneshian said.

He'd find out the next day his home was destroyed.

But the self-proclaimed "nostalgic guy" likes the sense of togetherness in Bell Canyon, where the closest store is 30 minutes away so sometimes borrowing from a neighbor is usually the better bet.

The limited escape routes, he thinks, are just something to be aware of: "It's probably a deterrent for some people (moving) in," he said. "But it shouldn't be."







Friedman's bill is likely to have an impact back in her district. In Glendale's 2008 emergency plan, bold, capitalized letters call attention to the Oakmont Woods and Whiting Woods communities and their single access roads. Both are within the state's very high hazard zone.


Friedman hopes for more state funding for the assessments. She sees reason for optimism in Gov. Gavin Newsom's declaration of a state of emergency ahead of the traditional wildfire season.

While there's no unified approach to dealing with California's wildfire evacuation problem, Friedman's bill calling for assessments to begin two years from now is not the only potential improvement underway.








"What really causes the problem is when you have too many people leaving in too little a time," Cova said.


Back in Malibu, Jones' wife got an evacuation alert on her phone at 6 a.m. Sheriff's officials came around on a loudspeaker at 7 a.m. It was around 8 a.m. when Jones actually left.


"Being prepared to leave at a moment's notice is a good idea," Cova said.


Damon Arthur of the Redding Record Searchlight contributed to this report.


Related Stories

Bg pattern light


Subscribe to Samoa Observer Online


Ready to signup?