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Large-Scale Evacuation Plans
updated: Oct 04, 2011, 3:06 PM

By Roberta Weissglass

During recent fires many residents were unable to evacuate because of bumper to bumper traffic.

The terrible fact is that there is no official plan for a large scale evacuation in place for the South Coast, which means that for any natural disaster, or if there were an earthquake or explosion destroying, or partially destroying, the Diablo Canyon nuclear plants, from which we are downwind, we would be unable to escape to protect ourselves.

Community Plans and county officials must provide for public health and safety. The Eastern Goleta Valley Draft Community Plan, now in review at the Planning Commission level, should not have gotten this far without disaster preparedness and emergency evacuation as part of the Plan.

The proposed Community Plan, does not address this very serious issue, and it is imperative that it contain such life-saving information. Furthermore, County's insistence on rezoning sites to high density only serves to exacerbate this very real and serious problem.

Comments in order of when they were received | (reverse order)

COMMENT 219893	2011-10-04 03:13 PM
If you see the animated evacuation models you'll be even more scared. There's just not enough road space to get everyone out. Someday there will be a major and hurried evacuation and it's not going to be pretty. I would hate to see an Oakland Hills type incident in our backyard.
ANEMONEFISH	2011-10-04 03:42 PM
This is why it's ESSENTIAL for people to stock up and be prepared for several days+ of self-sufficiency with water, food, meds, and even shelter. Remember 2005? It didn't take long to see shortages at the grocers. That was rainfall, not a quake. It doesn't take much for the freeway to lock up, the few back roads to become impassable, and the single rail line to go down. Electricity is shaky in a brush fire. Add to that a flooded airport or broken runways, and living on a boat looks pretty desirable.
COMMENT 219903	2011-10-04 03:54 PM
Best plan is to leave early. During the J-fire there was only 30 minutes between evacuation watch and "get out now!" and that was at 130 in the morning. Fortunately we had already left and got the warning by phone in our evacuation location far away, so we just went back to sleep. People in our neighborhood said it was indeed gridlock trying to get out. Be safe--leave early.
COMMENT 219909P	2011-10-04 04:15 PM
Was there ever a time in the past when it was possible to evacuate the city? Is it a realistic goal for the entire community to evacuate? Does the number of cars driving past our city everyday on the 101 (to get to LA or SF) make this goal impossible?
EZ2	2011-10-04 04:17 PM
Even on a bad day is a good day here..plan to go to friends houses if you need to evacuate..the roads are usually clogged so stay local..leave the area that's affected and head to a safe area..plan with friends-family for evacuation to another part of the area..Getting out of town will be impossible so plan LOCAL..Santa Barbara people can work together to help each other..we should all plan for a disaster
COMMENT 219912P	2011-10-04 04:18 PM
903, in the Tea Fire, there was no "early" if you lived in Montecito near the fire area. This is the whole problem with evac plans. Sometimes, there isn't enough time to get out. Add to that the fact that people were coming up in the dozens to gawk. So you had a clogged artery in every direction.
COMMENT 219917	2011-10-04 04:28 PM
Shut it down!!
COMMENT 219918	2011-10-04 04:29 PM
Hmmm, we have an inflatable that I suppose if worse-came-to-worse we could escape flames and head down to Haskell's, then get in the water and pray for the best. Seriously, the whole boat option (a real boat) keeps coming to mind when I think of fires and how few road/highway options we have when faced with a fire evacuation.
COMMENT 219924	2011-10-04 04:54 PM
No doubt OICU!!!! ;)
COMMENT 219935	2011-10-04 05:42 PM
How about all of you that live in the Riviera clear the trees and brush from around your properties, then perhaps "evacuations" won't be panic when there are 60MPH winds blowing fire... Have you seen the narrow streets lined on BOTH sides jammed with parked cars? Or driven down East Valley or some of the other escape route streets that are "canopied" with trees...? Good luck with evacs during high wind fires- NOW is the time to do something about it and take personal responsibiltiy starting with your property.
COMMENT 219936	2011-10-04 05:46 PM
This is all well and good, but what if we have a raging brush fire during a tsunami triggering earthquake during a diablo radiation blowing windstorm during a shark infestation while mudslides take out the freeway and railway?
SHOREBIRD	2011-10-04 05:54 PM
MATTSB - you forgot about the ants.
COMMENT 219939	2011-10-04 06:04 PM
I didn't forget, I just didn't want to scare anyone...
COMMENT 219946	2011-10-04 06:44 PM
So the question is, should we be rezoning and building high density condos when we cannot even evacuate those of us who are here? Some emergencies, such as a nuclear disaster 80 miles upwind from us, would require wholesale evacuation. Staying in place is not a sane option. If we're going to build more dense condos, how about insisting on putting an evacuation plan in place first? Aren't our County officials supposed to protect our health and safety as their highest priority?
COMMENT 219947	2011-10-04 06:47 PM
Re-opening Sycamore Canyon Rd. is long overdue.
COMMENT 219948	2011-10-04 06:51 PM
This is exactly why I would never want to live in Santa Barbara / Goleta again. There's only a few ways in / out of here and when they get clogged it's a real mess.
COMMENT 219952	2011-10-04 06:56 PM
We were lucky and evacuated without a problem. Packed and ready to go we left town in an orderly way in well organised traffic thanks to the police.
COMMENT 219953P	2011-10-04 07:12 PM
Many moons ago, there was a brush fire up the road. We had a young house guest who had recently been in a house fire and who panicked and wanted to evacuate. We couldn't even get out of our driveway ... so many lookie-loos who wanted to experience for themselves what was going on. We learned a lesson way back then and evacuated in daylight during the Jesusita fire.
ARTEMISIA	2011-10-04 07:30 PM
935, and were you here when the Painted Cave Fire jumped 6 lanes of freeway? And when the Jesusita flashed across bulldozed firebreaks like they weren't there? When it's that windy, there's nothing firefighters can do. You can live in fear of a fire, clear vegetation down to bare dirt for a hundred feet around your house, and destroy wildlife habitat and your quality of life for years. When (yes, when) a fire does come, your place may be toast anyway. JMHO.
COMMENT 219971	2011-10-04 08:27 PM
The OP's last sentence and the post 219946 (probably the same person) reveal the true agenda of this Op-Ed . . . and it's not fire safety.
COMMENT 219976P	2011-10-04 09:29 PM
971- i was just going to post the same thing- the writers entire agenda is her opposition to what she refers to as "dense housing"....just one more in a long line of red herrings designed to obstruct any new development on the south coast. Its laughable that she talks about "evacuation plan" as if shes an emergency planning expert or first responder. Of course if you ask the real experts, they will tell you that an "evacuation plan" is something that is triggered and determined by the emergency at hand. One route might make sense for one disaster but not another, so the experts prefer not to offer one "evacuation plan" in advance as it may well be meaningless at best or counterproductive at worst in the event of a true emergency. So, move on to the next delay tactic, ma'am
COMMENT 219987P	2011-10-05 06:29 AM
Opening Sycamore Canyon is essential. I believe it was opened during the Tea Fire, but no one was directed to it. It is now labeled "Not an evacuation route." Yet it is the most direct route for all those living in the huge watershed area it serves.
COMMENT 219993P	2011-10-05 06:51 AM
Therefore, maybe the new housing in Santa Barbara should be directed to be located downtown instead of sprawling outward to become clogged traffic during a fire evacuation.
LOTUSEATER	2011-10-05 06:53 AM
I dont know about any "agenda" here, maybe so. I just think that there is only so much you can do to prepare for disasters. I dont think it is any more possible to evacuate the entire city of SB any more than it would be possible to evacuate NYC, SF...etc....and they have the same issues we do (fire, nuke plants...etc) Just have a plan of some sort and deal, stop trying to get govt to fix everything and ensure everything...it never works. just my 2 cents...
COMMENT 220006	2011-10-05 07:20 AM
That is because the politically correct (or at least they think they are) crowd wants to obstruct traffic, narrow the streets and otherwise make it difficult to drive. They do this under the guise of the misnomer "traffic calming" in order to try to force people to walk, ride a bike or take a bus. This same left field crowd thinks that high density housing is also appropriate and desireable whether you like it or not and can be easily accomodated because all of those residents will be walking riding bikes or taking the bus. Until that lame and naive' mindset is eliminated you will always have difficulty providing for adequate evacuations of people in times of disaster, emergency threat or crisis or even when there are popular well attended events!
COMMENT 220012	2011-10-05 07:32 AM
This is one of the reasons that high density housing shouldn't even be up for debate. It should be painfully obvious to everyone that we don't have a suitable evacuation plan in the event of a serious emergency. We need to learn from previous experiences and plan accordingly.
COMMENT 220024	2011-10-05 07:59 AM
For an area like ours, any serious mass-evacuation plan would have to be based on making extra freeway lanes instanly available. This means having the plans and the means to turn the shoulders into active traffic lanes, or being able to shut down 101 NB somewhere in Ventura and 101 SB somewhere past Buelton so that traffic could move out of South SB county on both sides of the freeway. The first idea could be planned and then practiced during an evening rush hour period to see how well it works. The second idea is potentially more effective but impractical to practice during times of actual heavy traffic. Increasing local housing density would make any evacuation worse in some ways, but it would also make it better in some ways, especially if it happened during peak commuter hours since there are more jobs than beds in the Goleta- Carp corridor and most of the peak-hours traffic at the worst bottlenecks is from long-distance commuters.
ARCHIE	2011-10-05 08:41 AM
It's not only evacuation routes, it's the gasoline supply in cars.
COMMENT 220190P	2011-10-05 12:18 PM
Some people have a gross misunderstanding of housing density versus total housing. Low density, sprawling housing will make all the roads more crowded and ineffective for a mass evacuation from a fire. If the housing does not go downtown, then where should it go instead? Up in the foothills or up the coast?
COMMENT 220203	2011-10-05 12:37 PM
Like the rap song says "if you stay ready, you ain't got to get ready". Be prepared, have an escape route and be kind and courteous to others - mad panic solves nothing.

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