5.8.10 Route Control
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Conduct Route Control Planning – “Route control planning was an important part of evacuation. Poor planning resulted in clogged ingress/egress routes and lesser priority evacuations blocking the routes of high-priority evacuations.”
Southern California Firestorm 2003: Report for the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center
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Establish Route Control with Plan Evacuations – “Route control was reported as critical in maintaining freedom of movement for fire resources during evacuations. Areas that had planned evacuations reported more success than areas with no planning. This included educating residents on what actions to take prior to evacuating their home and what routes to follow. MAST issued an Incident Action Plan covering these items. In areas without planning, respondents said that trigger points set to initiate voluntary and then mandatory evacuations were not defined in advance, so they came within 30 minutes of each other.
So many evacuees on the road at once added to the confusion and to traffic jams. In areas where routes were not well controlled, residents were flowing out of neighborhoods on all streets, and firefighters reported swimming upstream to get to areas most threatened by the fire. Some areas did not impose one-way traffic restrictions, so evacuees were moving in two directions on the same streets, adding to the problem.”
Southern California Firestorm 2003: Report for the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center
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Identify Evacuation Routes and Keep Them Cleared – “In planned evacuations, evacuations were based on pre-established trigger points. Law enforcement moved to known choke points and controlled routes with one-way traffic restrictions and clearing certain streets for ingress.”
Southern California Firestorm 2003: Report for the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center
February 7, 2006
Publication #FHWA–HOP-08-015
