When are wildfire evacuations most dangerous? Research finds leaving late risks lives

The riskiest place to be during a wildfire is often on the road in a vehicle, according to the research in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. Examples from Australia’s Black Saturday wildfires in 2009, where 35 of 173 of the fatalities occurred during evacuation, and other evacuation fatalities during the 2023 wildfire in Yellowknife, Canada, and the 2018 wildfire in Paradise, California, drove the researchers to try to figure out the common decisions made by people trying to escape.

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“The clearest advice remains to avoid these situations altogether by evacuating early,” the researchers said in the article. “Ultimately, the safest option is to avoid hazardous driving wherever possible.”

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The researchers found that the strongest motivator for when people decided to evacuate, whether late or early, was the presence of other vehicles on evacuation routes. The study reinforced the role of peer behavior in real-time decision-making, leading the researchers to recommend targeted public messaging that explicitly addresses social influence to guide safer decision-making, even when others are engaging in risky behavior.

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A doctoral dissertation from Arthur Rohaert at Lund University determined that people evacuating from fires drive slower and leave larger gaps between vehicles, signaling that evacuation time estimates may be overly optimistic if simulations don’t take these otherwise small habits into account.