Wildfire

Wildland fire evacuations in Canada from 1980 to 2021

“…In Canada, wildland fire evacuations are the primary approach to protect people from wildfire. They are favoured over other options, such as 'Prepare and Defend' or 'Shelter in Place', largely because they are considered the lowest risk option to human health and safety (McGee et al 2021). Evacuations are highly disruptive to the many people evacuated each year.…”

“…Evacuations are highly disruptive to the many people evacuated each year. Moreover, the impacts of evacuation on the physical and mental health of evacuees do not end when the evacuation is over and some evacuees require years of supports (Christianson et al 2019;Asfaw et al 2020;McGee et al 2021;Montesanti et al 2021).…”

“…Wildland fire evacuation data are particularly sparse, as there is no single agency in Canada responsible for evacuations and few resources are dedicated to tracking these events. Due to complex jurisdictional issues, multiple levels of government and non-government organisations are involved with evacuations (Taylor et al 2006;McGee et al 2021). Provincial, territorial, and federal fire management agencies in Canada are largely responsible for fire response and protection of people and their assets (Tymstra et al 2020).…”

“…Additionally, a recent study on wildland fire evacuation in Canada's forested regions used the CWFED to examine wildland fire evacuation patterns and the characteristics of fires that necessitated evacuation (Tepley et al 2022). A growing literature on a variety of topics in wildland fire evacuation research has been investigated in Canada, including intended behavioural responses (Cote and McGee 2014), evacuation experiences (Scharbach and Waldram 2016;Downe et al 2018;Asfaw et al 2019;Betancur Vesga 2019;Christianson et al 2019;Mamuji and Rozdilsky 2019;McGee 2019;McGee et al 2019;Mottershead et al 2020;Drolet et al 2021;McGee et al 2021), evacuation reconstructions (Woo et al 2017), evacuation modelling (Folk 2019Wahlqvist et al 2021;Yerushalmi et al 2022), charitable response (Boulianne et al 2018;Yumagulova et al 2019), children (Kulig et al 2018;DeYoung et al 2018), and recovery (Pujadas Botey and Kulig 2014;Shepard et al 2017;Montesanti et al 2021;Lalani et al 2021). Many Indigenous Nations have also released reports related to wildland fire and evacuation experiences, along with calls to action (Clark 2018;NITHA (Northern Inter-Tribal Health Authority) .…”

Toward Evacuation Training in Virtual Reality: Requirements Gathering for Wildfire Experiences

“…Other research suggests that risk perception (RP) during natural disasters is most strongly moderated by previous experience and trust in authorities and is defined as the perception of imminent threat to a person’s life or health (Kinateder et al, 2015). People who have previously evacuated a wildfire are more likely to complete more mitigation measures such as creating an evacuation plan, clearing dead bushes, and mowing lawns because of heightened risk perception (McGee et al, 2022). VR could provide this previous experience.…”