Researchers eye fire evacuee data

When Sonoma County officials ordered nearly 200,000 residents to flee the potential path of the Kincade fire in 2019, their goal was getting as many people as possible out of harm’s way, and making sure everyone had enough time to flee.

They also created a trove of data that a group of international researchers are hoping to study so that Sonoma County and other wildfire-prone communities can better plan for future large-scale blazes.

As one part of their project, researchers are surveying people who lived in Sonoma County during the Kincade fire, which sparked Oct. 23, 2019, from high-voltage PG&E transmission lines in the Mayacamas Mountains east of Geyserville.

A second line of study will involve reviewing four weeks’ worth of anonymous cellphone GPS data in Sonoma County beginning a week before the fire’s start.

While there’s a large body of research regarding evacuations in other types of emergencies in the U.S., few studies have examined what motivates people to flee in wildfires, said Xilei Zhao, an assistant professor at the University of Florida’s civil engineering program and a lead researcher for the two studies. Unlike hurricanes, wildfires come with environmental cues like smoke and flames that can heavily influence people’s decisionmaking process, Zhao said.

“Wildfire scenarios are becoming more and more severe and the evacuation scales are becoming larger and larger, so I see it as a very pressing need,” Zhao said of the research. “If we study the Kincade fire very well and develop a robust plan in Sonoma County, they can definitely use it to prepare themselves for future events.”

The size of the Kincade fire and large number of people ordered to evacuate — about 190,000, or more than a third of the county — were among the reasons Zhao and her colleagues chose the blaze as their case study, Zhao said.

The insights gathered by Zhao’s team could help the county better understand why people choose to evacuate and how long they are gone.