1 million fled fires? As the smoke clears, the numbers shrink

[question everything]

Source: LA Times

By H.G. Reza, Sharon Bernstein and Megan Garvey
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

October 25, 2007

Despite widespread estimates that as many as 1 million evacuees fled Southern California's wildfires, the number of people displaced from their homes at any one time appears to have been substantially lower. At the height of evacuations Tuesday morning in San Diego County, officials said nearly 350,000 households had received automated emergency phone calls warning them to evacuate. Using 2000 census data, emergency response officials estimated that they had ordered 513,000 of the county's 3.1 million people out of their homes and advised 12,000 more to leave.

Within hours, however, some of those evacuations were lifted. More San Diego residents were ordered to leave on Wednesday, but by then, unknown numbers of earlier evacuees already were back home. That pattern is one of several reasons why the widely publicized estimates of evacuation numbers are probably exaggerated. Another reason is that not everyone obeyed evacuation orders.

Authorities cannot force people from their homes, although they can prevent them from returning once they leave. For those who leave, there is no central registry, meaning that official counts of evacuees are guesses based on population data.

(snip)

San Diego's sprawling Scripps Ranch development was another place where fire-tested residents weighed their options. Some neighborhoods emptied out nearly completely, with residents clogging traffic as a few die-hards remained to guard their homes. On other blocks, as many as half the residents stayed, according to neighbors. Four years ago, hundreds of homes in the development were lost in the massive Cedar fire.



Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-evacuation25oct25,1,50764.story?coll=la-headlines-california

[GoddessOfGuinness]

1. What are the stats on homelessness in the fire-afflicted areas?

Was there any way to notify and evacuate them?

[burrowowl]

2. K&R

HMMM!

[Misskittycat]

3. There were lots of voluntary evacuation areas; people were

urged to leave those areas and not wait for the last-minute mandatory evacuation orders or the reverse 911 calls when the flames were actually at their doors. Many people in those areas either left or at least packed their cars so they could leave at a moment's notice. The situation was very fluid and even those like me who were very near the voluntary or mandatory evacuation areas could face a dramatically changed situation in a very short time.

[WCGreen]

4. You know it was probably a lot of hyperventilating from guys like...

AC 360...

To make it worse than it really was...

[silverweb]

5. Key words:

"...the number of people displaced from their homes at any one time appears to have been substantially lower...."

Yeah, like maybe "only" a quarter million or half a million "at any one time."

Numbers were purely estimates and news stories frequently admitted that accurate counts were impossible while the crisis was at its height.

Maybe, after all this is over, the official count of people evacuated during the fires will be one million. Or not. Or maybe more.

So?

Then the argument can be about the degree of awfulness -- like whether the homes people returned to were burned to a pile of ash or "just" rendered uninhabitable.

When are people going to stop picking each other to death because of stupid shit?

We've got a whole planetary crisis that involves the very survival of our species and countless others.

Isn't that enough? :shrug:

[Lerkfish]

6. BUT in NOLA, the numbers were artificially trivialized smaller

anyone see a trend here?

[robcon]

7. No they weren't. The media consistently exaggerated the impact of Katrina.

"... In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Compass reported rapes of "babies," and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke of "hundreds of armed gang members" killing and raping people inside the Dome. Unidentified evacuees told of children stepping over so many bodies, "we couldn't count."

Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan said authorities had confirmed only four murders in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina - making it a typical week in a city that anticipated more than 200 homicides this year. Jordan expressed outrage at reports from many national media outlets that suffering flood victims had turned into mobs of unchecked savages…"

Current thinking is that there were six bodies found in the Superdome:

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside.

At the Convention Center, it was four:

despites reports of corpses piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, said health and law enforcement officials.

And:

"It's unfortunate we saw these kinds of stories saying crime had taken place on a massive scale when that wasn't the case. And they (national media outlets) have done nothing to follow up on any of these cases, they just accepted what people (on the street) told them. … It's not consistent with the highest standards of journalism."
http://katrinacoverage.com/2005/09/26/superdome-convention-center-death-toll-exaggerated.html