Work

Drilling for disaster preparedness: Insights from a community wildfire evacuation exercise

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Community evacuation exercises (or drills) are one approach residents and authorities use to train wildfire emergency procedures in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). This paper presents results from a drill performed in Roxborough Park, a WUI community in Colorado, USA, in 2024. Observer and self-report data were collected to derive resident preparatory actions, pre-travel, travel, and total evacuation times, as well as route choice and the drill’s impact on their perceived preparedness. It took more than 28 minutes until 90 % of residents began traveling and more than 48 minutes until 90 % had completed their evacuation. Most of the participants reported following the instructions for the evacuation route, with a minority taking a shorter or more familiar route. The work underlines the value of drills for improving community disaster preparedness, providing data for developing/testing computational models, and deepening our understanding of human behavior in wildfire scenarios.

Source: Transportation Research Part D Transport and Environment

DOI: 10.1016/j.trd.2026.105258