Y2K—a humanitarian disaster? Why not?

Australian bushfire agencies have a position that people in the path of a fire should either prepare, stay and defend their properties, or leave the area well before the fire front arrives. The position is based largely on observations that evacuating at the last minute is often fatal and that, generally, a key factor in house survival during a wildfire is the presence of people in the building. In practice, full implementation of the position has been difficult for a range of reasons.

As part of the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) research effort <www.bushfirecrc.com>, our project is examining the evidence base for this position and aims to suggest ways of improving implementation.

We have found that the available evidence, which goes back some 60 yr, strongly supports the Australian position. The position is supported on the grounds of both improved safety and reduced property loss. The evidence also shows that the most dangerous option—and the cause of most fatalities—is last minute evacuation.     

Public orders and personal opinions: household strategies for hurricane risk assessment

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between household evacuation decisions and official emergency management practices in light of recent increases in the availability and diversity of hurricane-related information. While we focus on Hurricane Floyd in South Carolina, we incorporate findings of our longitudinal research effort covering the last four years and six post-1995 hurricane threats to the state. While only 64% of residents in the mandatory evacuation zone complied with the Hurricane Floyd evacuation order, over 80% agreed that calling an evacuation was an appropriate precautionary response given the uncertainties of the storm. Longitudinal surveys indicate that Horry County residents have developed a fairly robust strategy in making evacuation decisions. This “hurricane savvy” population depends more heavily on individuals' assessments of risks than on official orders. Individual assessment practices differ from official orders in that greater weight is given to household circumstances and preferences, the diligent monitoring of a variety of information sources, and the incorporation of past experiences into the decision-making process. Surveys indicate differences between the general public and officials in terms of priorities and preferences about hurricane evacuations. The public demands more information about the hurricane threat. Officials place more emphasis on planning evacuation routes and public safety measures.     

Stay and defend or leave early: Policy problems and experiences during the 2003 Victorian bushfires

Australian state and territory fire authorities advise residents to make a decision to prepare, stay and defend their properties from bushfires or leave well before the fire arrives in their area. The ‘Stay and defend or leave early’ policy is underpinned by strong evidence that well-prepared houses can be successfully defended and that late evacuation is a dangerous strategy. This paper presents the results of a study of the policy's implementation during the 2003 bushfires in North East Victoria and East Gippsland. Results suggest that despite high levels of awareness and support for the policy, there is some confusion over what it means to ‘stay and defend’ and ‘leave early’.     

Media and bushfires: A community perspective of the media during the Grampians Fires 2006

This paper examines the ways residents in the Grampians area in the Australian state of Victoria used their local and their state and national based media before, during and after the 2006 bushfires (wildfires). The researchers were particularly concerned to understand how residents evaluated media sources as trustworthy and credible in relation to bushfire warnings and information about the fires delivered in the media.

Analysis of data derived from two separate focus group sessions conducted by the researchers reveals four main themes. (1) The media are perceived as part of a broader information gathering process. (2) Local knowledge is the most important aspect in broadcast information. (3) Members of small communities can feel disenfranchised and resentful of the media when media coverage focuses on larger towns, and (4) the effects of media reporting, including specific warnings, are both immediate and long lasting.

The paper explores some of the tensions that result from the ways rural residents use and distinguish between local/regional and metropolitan and out-of-state bushfire information; and it encourages better use of the local/regional media to increase community safety and awareness in relation to bushfire mitigation, preparedness and crisis management issues before, during and after the fires. It is suggested that risk communications professionals need to understand that when mediated risk-related communications are provided, a key evaluative criterion is whether or not those media and the messages represent and reflect local knowledge.     

Media and bushfires: A community perspective of the media during the Grampians Fires 2006

This paper examines the ways residents in the Grampians area in the Australian state of Victoria used their local and their state and national based media before, during and after the 2006 bushfires (wildfires). The researchers were particularly concerned to understand how residents evaluated media sources as trustworthy and credible in relation to bushfire warnings and information about the fires delivered in the media.Analysis of data derived from two separate focus group sessions conducted by the researchers reveals four main themes. (1) The media are perceived as part of a broader information gathering process. (2) Local knowledge is the most important aspect in broadcast information. (3) Members of small communities can feel disenfranchised and resentful of the media when media coverage focuses on larger towns, and (4) the effects of media reporting, including specific warnings, are both immediate and long lasting.The paper explores some of the tensions that result from the ways rural residents use and distinguish between local/regional and metropolitan and out-of-state bushfire information; and it encourages better use of the local/regional media to increase community safety and awareness in relation to bushfire mitigation, preparedness and crisis management issues before, during and after the fires. It is suggested that risk communications professionals need to understand that when mediated risk-related communications are provided, a key evaluative criterion is whether or not those media and the messages represent and reflect local knowledge.     

The performance of the sydney flood warning system, august 1986

During August 1986 Sydney experienced its worst flooding for decades. Some 2,500 properties were flooded and transport was severely disrupted in much of the metropolitan area. The flood provided an opportunity to examine the operation of a warning system in a major Australian city. Pre-existing research into flood warnings was expanded to take advantage of the opportunity.
The warning system is examined in terms of: its impact on flood losses; consumer satisfaction; and inefficiences or breakdowns within the system. Much of the flooded area was not covered by a formal warning system. For the area that was covered, performance could be improved. Problems were experienced with the data collection and transmission network. Warning dissemination was inadequate, and the majority of those surveyed claimed that they did not receive warnings. The actions of householders reduced the flood damage substantially, but this does not appear to be the result of official warnings. Key recommendations concern improving the reliability of the flood detection network and information management.     

Concerns and future preparedness plans of a vulnerable population in New Jersey following Hurricane Sandy

Knowing how people prepare for disasters is essential to developing resiliency strategies. This study examined recalled concerns, evacuation experiences, and the future preparedness plans of a vulnerable population in New Jersey, United States, following Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Understanding the responses of minority communities is key to protecting them during forthcoming disasters. Overall, 35 per cent of respondents were not going to prepare for an event. Intended future preparedness actions were unrelated to respondents' ratings of personal impact. More Blacks and Hispanics planned on preparing than Whites (68 versus 55 per cent), and more Hispanics planned on evacuating than did others who were interviewed. A higher percentage of respondents who had trouble getting to health centres were going to prepare than others. Respondents' concerns were connected to safety and survival, protecting family and friends, and having enough food and medicine, whereas future actions included evacuating earlier and buying sufficient supplies to shelter in place.     

Drug markets during the Katrina disaster

PURPOSE: The purpose of this paper is to examine the experiences of poor drug users and sellers who remained in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to identify their special needs and the unique challenges they present to disaster management. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: Semi-structured, open-ended interviews were conducted with 119 poor, predominantly African-American, drug users and sellers. Their stories in their own words provide a mosaic of drug-related experiences from the period immediately preceding the storm through evacuation and reveal the motivations behind their behaviors. FINDINGS: Many drug users placed partying, maintaining their habits, and making money ahead of personal safety and evacuation. Drug use and sales led many not to evacuate before the storm, to use drugs in congregate shelters, to avoid shelters, to roam through flooded debris-strewn streets, to loot stores and homes of drug dealers, and to use violence or the threat of violence to achieve their drug-related aims. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: During a disaster, many poor drug users place risks on themselves, their families, their communities and ultimately on rescue workers. The conclusion presents pragmatic and humanitarian guidelines for successfully addressing this additional challenge. The recommendations are consistent with other suggestions concerning the special needs of indigent populations.     

Stay and defend or leave early: Policy problems and experiences during the 2003 Victorian bushfires

Australian state and territory fire authorities advise residents to make a decision to prepare, stay and defend their properties from bushfires or leave well before the fire arrives in their area. The ‘Stay and defend or leave early’ policy is underpinned by strong evidence that well-prepared houses can be successfully defended and that late evacuation is a dangerous strategy. This paper presents the results of a study of the policy's implementation during the 2003 bushfires in North East Victoria and East Gippsland. Results suggest that despite high levels of awareness and support for the policy, there is some confusion over what it means to ‘stay and defend’ and ‘leave early’.     

Decision‐making and evacuation planning for flood risk management in the Netherlands

A traditional view of decision‐making for evacuation planning is that, given an uncertain threat, there is a deterministic way of defining the best decision. In other words, there is a linear relation between threat, decision, and execution consequences. Alternatives and the impact of uncertainties are not taken into account. This study considers the ‘top strategic decision‐making’ for mass evacuation owing to flooding in the Netherlands. It reveals that the top strategic decision‐making process itself is probabilistic because of the decision‐makers involved and their crisis managers (as advisers). The paper concludes that deterministic planning is not sufficient, and it recommends probabilistic planning that considers uncertainties in the decision‐making process itself as well as other uncertainties, such as forecasts, citizens responses, and the capacity of infrastructure. This results in less optimistic, but more realistic, strategies and a need to pay attention to alternative strategies.     

基于计算机仿真的火灾时人员安全疏散可靠度分析

火灾中的人员疏散是个复杂的过程,受到诸多因素的共同影响,传统的人员疏散可靠度分析常常忽略这些因素之间的相互作用。为更准确地计算出火灾中人员疏散的可靠度,本文以某地铁车站为例,借助人员疏散仿真软件buildingEXODUS与火灾模拟程序FDS,分别得到人员所需安全疏散时间(RSET)和可利用安全疏散时间(ASET)。在此基础上,构造人员安全疏散极限状态方程,利用一次二阶矩理论求得安全疏散可靠概率。由于能够较好地反映疏散过程中各影响因素之间的相互作用,因此,采用本文提出的可靠度分析方法能够得到更合理的结果。     

Bushfire simulators and analysis in Australia: insights into an emerging sociotechnical practice

The present context of escalating environmental risks places increased pressure and importance on our technical ability to predict and mitigate the potential consequences and occurrence of major natural hazards such as bushfire (or ‘wildfire’). Over the past decade, bushfire prediction in Australia, as in many other fire-prone countries, has increasingly come to involve both trained fire behaviour analysts and complex computer-based two-dimensional bushfire simulation models. During this transitional moment in bushfire management, there is a clear need to better understand the ways in which such predictive technologies and practitioners influence how we anticipate, encounter and manage this natural hazard and its effects. In this paper, the authors seek to prepare the ground for studies of the social dimensions of bushfire prediction by investigating how simulators and predictive practitioners have been mobilised and represented in Australia to date. The paper concludes by posing several questions that bushfire practitioners, policy-makers and researchers alike in Australia and elsewhere will need to address as our flammable future emerges.     

The World Trade Center Bombing: Injury Prevention Strategies for High-rise Building Fires

The WTC disaster provided an opportunity to look for ways to prevent morbidity among occupants of high-rise buildings during fires. This paper first describes the overall morbidity resulting from the explosion and fire, and second, presents the results of a case-control study carried out to identify risk factors for smoke-related morbidity. The main ones include: increased age, presence of a pre-existing cardio-pulmonary condition, entrapment in a lift and prolonged evacuation time. Study results point to the importance of the following safety systems during high-rise building fires: smoke-control systems with separate emergency power sources; lift-cars, lift-car position-monitoring systems, and lift-car communication systems with separate emergency power sources; two-way emergency communication systems on all floors and in stairwells; stairwells with emergency lighting and designed for the rapid egress of crowds; evacuation systems/equipment to assist in the evacuation of vulnerable people (elderly, infirm). Also important are evacuation plans that include regularly scheduled safety training and evacuation drills.     

Alternatives to evacuation during wildland fire: Exploring adaptive capacity in one Idaho community

The use of alternatives to evacuation during wildfire events continues to be an intensely debated strategy in the professional and policy circles of numerous fire-prone countries. The most recent chapter comes in response to the Black Saturday Fires in Australia, which has led to policy changes concerning alternatives to evacuation in both Australia and USA. This study explores the local context that influenced the development of alternatives to evacuation in one Idaho community through in-depth interviews with local residents and officials. It acknowledges alternatives as one ‘fire-adaptive behaviour’ of the local community, a key characteristic that US fire professionals identify as a means to better manage wildfire. We apply and extend a recently created adaptive capacity framework for wildfire to uncover specific community characteristics that both led to and reinforce the development of alternatives to evacuation that are tailored to the local population. Identification of these characteristics serves as one important step towards better local assessment of adaptive capacity for a broad classification of ‘fire-adaptive’ behaviours. We conclude that no one combination of local resources can guarantee the development of alternatives to evacuation. Rather, diverse local context will result in different approaches and applicability of the practice.     

计算机仿真方法在人群疏散影响参数研究中的应用

建筑物中的人群疏散受到灾场环境、建筑结构以及人员本身等诸多因素的共同影响,明确这些因素的影响机理与程度对人群的疏散安全具有重要意义.借助仿真软件buildingEXODUS,以某地铁车站为例,定量地研究了人员行走速度等参数对人群平均等待时间和人群平均行走时间的影响.结果表明:不同参数对人群疏散的影响存在着差别.即使是相同的参数,在不同类型的建筑中,其影响程度也可能发生变化.在此基础上,明确了出口涌流能力、疏散人数、行走速度和疏散准备时间四个对整体疏散时间影响显著的参数,通过对上述参数的控制,可以提高人群疏散的安全可靠性.     

Characteristics of fear of crime in evacuation shelters after the Great East Japan Earthquake

After the Great East Japan Earthquake in March 2011, numerous evacuees had to stay in evacuation shelters such as school gymnasiums. In general, after a disaster, ensuring the safety and security of evacuees in evacuation shelters is a serious problem. Consequently, many of these evacuees feared that they would be victims of crime in the shelters or that their evacuated homes would be burgled. To examine what factors evoke a general fear of crime in shelters and burglary of evacuated homes, we conducted an online questionnaire on 300 evacuees in Miyagi Prefecture who had stayed at such shelters. From a factor analysis of fear of 16 specific kinds of crime in shelters, we extracted two factors representing fear of property and female-related crime. We then found that a general fear of crime in shelters was associated with being young and a fear of female-related crime, while a fear of burglary of evacuated homes was associated with being female, owning a detached house, and fear of property crime. Based on these results, we provide recommendations aiming to help reduce the fear of crime in shelters and burglary of evacuated homes.     

Landscape fires as social disasters: An overview of ‘the bushfire problem’

The ‘landscape’, ‘bushfire’ or ‘forest-fire’ problem is exemplified by the destruction of homes and human lives by landscape fires raging out of control. The ‘problem’ involves a series of landscapes (e.g. wildland and suburb), a series of systems (e.g. biophysical system and environmental-effects system), and a series of time phases (e.g. planning phase). It is a multi-stakeholder, multi-variable, multi-scale problem. Land uses, like ‘farmland’, imply a set of specific assets and, therefore, particular perceptions of losses. In all land-use designations, at any one point, fire-proneness may be seen as a function of exposure to ignition sources (embers, burning brands or flame radiation and flame contact) and the ease of ignition. The landscape-fire problem has multiple partial ‘solutions’, not just one overall solution, and these involve social governance, land management (public and private), suppression capacity and personal preparedness. The problem needs to be addressed at multiple temporal and spatial scales in an integrated fashion for the outcome to be of maximal benefit. There will always be a residual risk of severe fire occurrence. Minimisation of residual risk requires effective land management, recurrent funding and the perpetual vigilance of all parties.