If there is a wildfire in Orinda, evacuation will be critical.  What has Orinda done?

 

If you search for "evacuation plan" on the Orinda website (www.CityOfOrinda.org), you will find the "Orinda Fire Evacuation Guide and General Information", updated Aug 28, 2024.  This is a four-page brochure which provides maps showing how to drive to Highway 24.  The "guide" states that whether the fire is coming from the north, south, east or west, that is your only way out of town.  Which everyone knows, is not true.

 

How do you find out if there is a fire coming your way and from where?  The guide tells you how to sign up for alerts (www.CWSalerts.com and Nixle messages) but gives no indication of what or how or when you may hear.  It also suggests that you "know your zone" by going online to Protect.Genasys.com but, again, gives no indication of what that "buys" you.

 

Digging deeper, the City produced an Evacuation Analysis in January 2023.  This included evacuation planning for a variety of disasters, including wildfire.  The study evaluated three wildfire "scenarios":

1) Fire coming from the south or west

2) Fire coming from the east (Lafayette Reservoir open space)

3) Fire coming from the north (Berkeley Hills though the Briones open space)

 

In all three scenarios, most of Orinda would take 24-60 minutes to evacuate and some areas up to 90 minutes.  With Orinda stretching six miles, from Bear Creek Road on the north to Miramonte High School on the south, and with sustained winds of 50-70 miles per hour in the recent disastrous fires in Santa Rosa (2017) and Paradise (2018), we might not have 60-90 minutes to evacuate.

 

There is no indication of how evacuation times relate to wildfire spread times.  Wildfire projection models can model where fire likely to spread fastest.  Which roads will be cut off first. 

 

Can this information be used to route traffic or are there no alternative routes?

 

Can evacuation times be sped up (turning Miner Rd into a one-way street, in which case how do suppression units get to the fire to slow it down)?

 

Can spread time be reduced (by an aggressive reduction of vegetation fuel and home hardening)?  Where is it most crucial?  What is the current condition of those areas?

 

There is no indication if these questions were asked or addressed.

 

Recently the group Orindans for Safe Emergency Evacuation (OSEE) won a lawsuit against the City for not properly evaluating the impact of 1,600 additional housing units proposed by the City in its Downtown Precise Plan (DPP) on emergency evacuation in the event of wildfire.  OSEE and the City saw the lawsuit as something very different.  The City's description of the suit saw it as a nuisance suit to stop downtown development, costing the city $700,000 in legal fees.  OSEE saw the suit as a means to force the city to fully understand the impact on evacuation of increasing the population of Orinda by 20% or more.  The court, which found in favor of OSEE, stated that the current analysis "does not provide the public and decision-makers with sufficient information to understand the magnitude of the impacts of the Project on evacuation in the face of wildfire hazards."  Apparently, the city now has to go back to the drawing board and either perform the proper analysis or reduce the number of proposed housing unit to a level it did properly analyze.

 

While trying to understand how bad a mass evacuation would be may be informative, especially if it generates ways to improve it, this web site believes that the major focus should be on wildfire prevention: fuel mitigation including home hardening (homes are major fuel sources).  Preventing fires from happening and keeping them controllable if they do occur.  Thus, reducing the need for evacuation.