The Times reached out to nearly a dozen city, county and state agencies involved with evacuation planning. All either did not respond to requests for comment, could not to point to an evacuation analysis in line with the state\u2019s guidelines for AB 747 or indicated the responsibility for doing the work lie with other agencies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that local government leaders would not do as much as they can to protect human life and safety is just shocking to me,\u201d Levine said.<\/p>\n
In January, the streets of Pacific Palisades mirrored the scene that distressed Levine in 2018. Traffic was at a standstill on Sunset Boulevard and Palisades Drive \u2014 two of the only routes out of the burning landscape. When a spot fire exploded next to the route, police ran down the street, shouting at evacuees to run for their lives.<\/p>\n
Every year, dozens of evacuations are ordered in California, organized and completed without any casualties \u2014 or even a news story. In these cases, public safety officials have all the lead time that they need to organize a safe and orderly evacuation before a fire reaches a community.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s the much more dire evacuation scenarios \u2014 when the lead time is shorter than the time it takes to evacuate, like in the Palisades \u2014 where emergency planning is both most important and often ignored.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no incentive to ever present an evacuation plan that isn\u2019t very positive,\u201d said Thomas Cova, a professor at the University of Utah who studies wildfire evacuation analysis.<\/a> \u201cWhy would an emergency planner \u2014 say some young upstart in an emergency operation center \u2014 ever want to present a plan to their colleagues that involves some people burning?\u201d <\/p>\n The chaos of these worst-case scenario evacuations often look nothing like the orderly phased evacuations cities often focus on. Unlike in \u201cblue sky\u201d evacuations, smoke can hinder visibility and cause crashes. Often whole towns must leave at once. Power outages can prevent public safety officials from communicating with residents.<\/p>\n It\u2019s why Marylee Guinon \u2014 president of the State Alliance for Firesafe Road Regulations, an advocacy group aimed at protecting and expanding the state\u2019s community fire safety requirements \u2014 suspects AB 747 is facing pushback from local governments. \u201cThey don\u2019t want data that would tell them that it\u2019s going to be a nine-hour evacuation,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n All the while, the risk of fast-moving fires is growing.<\/p>\n In a 2024 study<\/a>, researchers from the University of Colorado in Boulder analyzed more than 60,000 fires documented by NASA satellites in the first two decades of the 21st century. By 2020, fires in California were growing, on average, four times faster than they were in 2001. <\/p>\n L.A.\u2019s missing evacuation analyses<\/p>\n AB 747 requires local governments to include their evacuation analyses in the safety element of their general plan \u2014 the long-term blueprint for future development of a city or county.<\/p>\n The city of L.A.\u2019s current safety element provides no such analysis. Instead, it simply lists evacuation planning as \u201congoing.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement to The Times, the city\u2019s Planning Department, responsible for writing and revising the general plan, said details of evacuation routes are not made publicly available since \u201clarge urban cities such as the City of Los Angeles are high profile targets for terrorist attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n The city did not immediately clarify what legal authority it has to keep the analysis private as California law generally requires safety elements to be public.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a mystery how hiding evacuation route capacity and viability can save lives when community members are fleeing a natural disaster,\u201d Levine said in an email to The Times. \u201cIt is a dubious claim that terrorists could possibly be well positioned to take advantage of such a catastrophic situation.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the county said it complied through an analysis it included in its 2025 safety element<\/a>. However, fire safety advocates criticized the county\u2019s analysis as simplistic and failing to adequately determine whether quick and safe evacuations are feasible.<\/p>\n The Governor\u2019s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation, which provides guidance on state planning laws, recommended that local governments use traffic software to simulate different evacuations to estimate how long they might take. Instead, the county grabbed a list of all roads in unincorporated areas within its borders and listed them as \u201cevacuation routes\u201d so long as they were paved, public and not a dead end.<\/p>\n The intent of the law is \u201cnot \u2018just list the roads you have,\u2019\u201d Levine said. \u201cSo I\u2019m super disappointed that L.A. County is dismissive in this way. You would expect, particularly post this year\u2019s fires, Palisades and Eaton, they would take this far more seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n When pressed on their deviations from the state\u2019s guidance, both the city and county planning departments passed the buck to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which indicated in assessments that the two departments\u2019 safety elements were compliant.<\/p>\n Cal Fire, however, said that its assessments were nonbinding and that complying with the law falls on the city and county.<\/p>\n Yet, none of the local or state agencies directly responded to an inquiry from The Times asking them to explain the discrepancy between the guidance and the safety elements.<\/p>\n The city and county both have detailed evacuation plans that coordinate how public safety officials in the emergency operations, police and fire departments would orchestrate a mass exodus. However, the analysis of roadway networks to estimate how long those evacuations \u2014 even if perfectly orchestrated \u2014 may take, is different.<\/p>\n \u201cHistorically, fire agencies put forth evacuation plans that are operationally driven,\u201d said retired fire Battalion Chief Doug Flaherty. \u201cThey talk about communications. They talk about unified command. \u2026 What is missing is an actual detailed, road-by-roadway capacity analysis of the time that it\u2019s going to take for people to safely evacuate the area.\u201d<\/p>\n For Guinon, the lack of follow-through from cities and counties across the state<\/a> is indicative of a common trend in wildfire legislation.<\/p>\n \u201cVirtually every piece of legislation that I dig into, I find out it was the result of a tragic catastrophe,\u201d she said. \u201cThis legislation comes out with really, really clear intent over and over, and then it gets forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n Understanding the problem is half the solution<\/p>\n Despite the complexity of simulating cars on a computerized network of roads to understand evacuation times, the scientific prowess exists \u2014 and the software to do it is widely accessible.<\/p>\n When Flaherty, a Tahoe Basin resident, became frustrated with his area\u2019s lack of movement on the issue, he commissioned an evacuation study through his nonprofit, TahoeCleanAir.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n