Amy Cardinal Christianson, Lynn M. Johnston, Jacqueline A. Oliver, David Watson, David Young, Heather MacDonald, John Little, Bruce Macnab, Noemie Gonzalez Bautista
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background
Every year, people in Canada are evacuated due to wildland fires to avoid death, injury, and illness from fire and smoke events.
Aims
In this paper, we provide an overview of evacuations recorded in the Canadian Wildland Fire Evacuation Database between 1980 and 2021.
Methods
Our analysis covers evacuations in Canada from 1980 to 2021. We provide summary statistics including number of evacuations and evacuees, evacuation duration, seasonality, evacuation causes, community types, structure losses, and fatalities. We also investigate temporal and spatial patterns.
Key results
Between 1980 and 2021, there were 1393 wildland fire evacuation events with 576,747 people evacuated. During this period, there was an overall increase in frequency of evacuations, number of evacuees, and duration of events. Structure loss occurred during 194 evacuation events, with 4105 homes burned. We estimate wildland fire evacuations cost at least CAD3.7 billion (excluding structural losses), jumping to CAD4.6 billion if we include productivity losses. Indigenous peoples are disproportionately impacted in wildfire evacuations compared to the general Canadian population.
Conclusions
Wildland fire evacuations continue to occur across Canada and are increasing.
Implications
The findings from this study give us a better understanding of the characteristics of wildland fire evacuations, which can help guide emergency management.
期刊介绍:
International Journal of Wildland Fire publishes new and significant articles that advance basic and applied research concerning wildland fire. Published papers aim to assist in the understanding of the basic principles of fire as a process, its ecological impact at the stand level and the landscape level, modelling fire and its effects, as well as presenting information on how to effectively and efficiently manage fire. The journal has an international perspective, since wildland fire plays a major social, economic and ecological role around the globe.
The International Journal of Wildland Fire is published on behalf of the International Association of Wildland Fire.