Die sich entwickelnde (und ungenaue) Wissenschaft der Flucht vor einem Lauffeuer

When evacuations go wrong, they really go wrong. In LA’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood, panicked drivers stuck in traffic abandoned their vehicles in the middle of evacuation routes, leaving emergency crews unable to reach the fires. Authorities [used bulldozers](https://deadline.com/2025/01/palisades-fire-tv-coverage-bulldozer-steve-guttenberg-1236250667/) to push empty cars out of the way.

To prevent this sort of chaos, researchers are attempting to answer some basic but critical questions: Who reacts to what kind of warnings? And when are people most likely to get out of harm’s way?

Many of researchers’ ideas around evacuations come from other sorts of disasters—from studies of residents’ reactions to floods, or nuclear disasters, or volcanic eruptions, and [especially hurricanes](https://www.wired.com/2016/10/move-2-million-people-hurricane-matthews-way/).

But hurricanes and wildfires differ in some obvious, and less obvious ways. Hurricanes are usually bigger, and affect whole regions, which can require many states and agencies to work together to help people travel longer distances. But hurricanes are also relatively predictable and slow-moving, and tend to give authorities much more time to organize escapes and to strategize about phased evacuations so that everyone doesn’t hit the road at once. Wildfires are less predictable, and require rapid communications.

Read more: [https://www.wired.com/story/the-growing-and-inexact-science-of-fleeing-a-wildfire/](https://www.wired.com/story/the-growing-and-inexact-science-of-fleeing-a-wildfire/)