Wildfire evacuations aren’t mandatory, but people should be held accountable

Throughout this awful fire season, there’s been much armchair debate over the wisdom — and, yes, the morality — of failing to follow orders to evacuate.

Are those who stand their ground brave or foolhardy?

Are they selfish or selfless, in that some stay behind not just to protect their own homes, but their neighbors’ homes as well?

For many of us far from the danger zone, it’s a hypothetical slam dunk: If ordered to leave our homes on account of a fire — or any other natural disaster — we’d get the heck out of Dodge as quickly as possible and let the professionals do their jobs.

But in real life, that’s proving to be less and less the case because fire authorities say an increasing number of residents are ignoring orders to evacuate and choosing to stay and defend their homes.

In the recent Blue Cut Fire in San Bernardino County, a U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman told the Associated Press as many as half of 35,000 households ordered to evacuate failed to do so.

In the Chimney Fire near Lake Nacimiento, the refusal rate hasn’t been so extreme, though there have been holdouts.

“It’s not that many, but there have been a few people who believe they can protect their property,” San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Tony Cipolla said.

Some who stay behind are knowledgeable and well-prepared, and they do manage to save their homes.

Authorities, though, say failing to follow evacuation orders is risky at best — and, at worst, fatal. One Cal Fire official we spoke with likened it to Russian roulette.

Yet there are no laws on the books in California compelling people to evacuate.

“We legally can’t force someone to leave their home,” Cipolla said. “If people refuse, we document it. We take down their name and address. We have documentation they refused to evacuate, to make sure we’ve covered all of our bases.”

It’s also up to the Sheriff’s Office to deal with the aftermath when things go wrong, as former county Supervisor Shirley Bianchi pointed out on Facebook.

“If someone doesn't leave, it is the deputies who have to find the deceased (a really gruesome assignment), identify the body, then notify the next of kin,” she wrote.

In California, it is a misdemeanor to refuse to follow an evacuation order, but it’s a law that’s rarely, if ever, enforced.

Instead, authorities rely on the power of persuasion. In some jurisdictions, officials ask for names of next of kin to be notified in case the residents don’t survive the fire — a dose of reality that can be the strongest case for evacuation.

We don’t see what more they do. Unless we’re prepared to forcibly remove people from their homes — and seriously, would authorities even have time for that? — there will almost certainly continue to be some people who refuse to evacuate, regardless of public opinion.

That’s their choice, but what concerns us is the effect their actions may have on others. If firefighters have to drop what they’re doing to go back and rescue someone from an evacuation zone, that could hamper fire suppression efforts and put firefighters themselves at risk.

That’s not OK. We urge state lawmakers to consider tougher consequences in such cases.

One idea: In North Carolina and Texas, people who refuse to evacuate can be held civilly liable for rescue costs if they wind up needing to be saved. That’s assuming rescue is even possible, which is not always the case.

“When a fire comes through it’s crazy — it’s chaos, mayhem, walls of flame coming at you,” Cal Fire spokeswoman Diley Greiser said. “You’re trying to find an address in a condition like that? It’s almost impossible to do.”

We weren’t able to track down comprehensive national statistics on the number of deaths that have occurred because people failed to follow fire evacuation orders.

There are statistics for individual fires. For example, according to the National Fire Protection Journal, a study of the 2003 Cedar Fire in Southern California concluded that “almost all of the 22 civilian deaths occurred when people tried to evacuate at the last minute.”

That type of information needs to be collected and widely disseminated via public service messages. That’s especially true now, with scientists warning that wildfires will become ever more prevalent in the West.

We also strongly urge emergency responders and political leaders throughout California to re-examine policies on wildfire evacuations — including more accountability for those who ignore orders to leave but wind up calling for help when fire’s licking at their doors.

This story was originally published August 27, 2016 at 3:44 PM with the headline "Wildfire evacuations aren’t mandatory, but people should be held accountable."