First off, I agree with you on the need for a disaster review board.
Everybody in the fire community knew LA is a ticking timebomb. Unbridled development, lack of or no adherence to codes, a fire starved environment, lots of people=more ignition sources. Look at some of the pictures of homes built midslope with vegetation touching it. Everybody wants to be one with nature until nature comes knocking. When I took fire science classes they said that fuel type saw a historical fire return interval of 5-7 years. Its been over 100 years since some of it has seen fire.
Mike had you ever tried to evacuate people in the short term with a fire bearing down on you? Doesn't matter what plans you had laid, it can't be compared to a hurricane evacuation. Smoke fills the air, embers are raining down, emergency vehicles are trying to get in as civlians are trying to leave. People are in such a panic they don't realize their garage door has a red pull handle to operate it with no power. Spot fires are popping up well ahead of the main fire cutting off evacuation routes and inciting even more panic. As Mike Tyson said "Everybody has a plan until you get punched in the mouth".
Its not a California problem. We have seen this play out in Colorado, Tennessee (remember Gaitlinburg), California, Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, basically anywhere that sees alot of fire. Fast moving fires in extreme conditions are going to be a raging shitshow.
Pretty good article in Wildfire today
Lessons from LA - what do we do now? - Wildfire Today
Evacuations
To have a large fire in such a heavily populated area with so few deaths or injuries is extraordinary. This suggests the evacuation process was largely successful – people were moved out of harms way. And yet we saw those abandoned vehicles on narrow mountainous roads that funnelled people onto Palisades Drive and Sunset Boulevard , panicked residents fleeing on foot, bulldozers shunting cars off the road to gain access for fire fighting vehicles – that’s not how an orderly evacuation is meant to work, that is last-minute, panicked fleeing. There are many international examples of disorderly evacuations going horribly wrong.
Is there are better way to get thousands of people out of the way of a fast moving wildfire? If evacuations occur well before the flames arrive that would help. But how early do you do early evacuations? When is it too late to leave? Where do 100,000 people evacuate to?
