This is a very complex issue. People who wish to stay have no idea of what can really happen. Sure it is nice to talk about gel and Nomex, but what good are those items when the air is super heated and one breath seals up your lungs? They have no idea what it is like to escape a fast moving fire. They don't know how quickly escape routes become dangerous. They have no idea of how or when to take a defensive position and posture when the possibility of a low and close retardant drop arises. Citizens left inside a danger zone have no communications with the fire personnel on the scene including posted lookouts, air recon, and crews watching fire behavior.
They don't know much, if any thing at all, about fire behavior and the signs to watch for before a major blowup. For example, how many people can tell you the difference between a backing fire and a back fire or the difference between a slope influenced or wind influenced backing fire. How familiar are they with the thermal belt phenomena? They know nothing about the critical timing in lighting a back fire. Do they know how to size up a situation enough to start taking actions now based on what the fire situation can be 1 hour, 12 hours, or 24 hours in the future? Do they know anything about the eddy effect that influences fire at the top of a chimney (a topographical feature, not made of brick)? Do they understand the increase in fire intensity on the lee side of a structure or large rock feature? Do they understand what a ladder fuel is? How about what the effect of fuel size has on heat production and ability of a fire to spread? Do they know what a 1 hour, 10 hour, and 1000 hour fuel is? Do they know what the moisture level of each is on any particular day and do they even begin to understand the significance that each has on fire behavior? Have they studied and experienced how climate is influenced by terrain and how each of those is further influenced by fuel types, position, and amounts?
Do they know the "18 Situations That Shout Watch Out" and have worked with them enough time that when 2-3 of them present themselves the hairs on the back of their necks stand up. Those 18 situations are based on scores of fatal/significant injury events, and most wildland firefighters are familiar with a dozen or more of these. Wildland firefighters read the reports of every wildland fatality investigation that comes out. You have these incidents presented in great detail in training sessions or at your yearly refreshers and believe me they all make you squirm in you seat because you have been in similar situations that did not seem that dangerous but then turned out to be for those who lost their lives. Unless the property owner is a retired firefighter they aren't going to have a clue about any of this.
The haven't been given any training on shelter deployment, let alone have a shelter. They likely won't have the correct kind of eye protection, helmet shroud, and the knowledge of how to protect themselves from smoke inhalation. Do they know how best to utilize water on a fire, what nozzle settings are the most effective? Are they pumping water from a swimming pool with a pump that won't fail when the power goes out? Are they using 1.5" hose and not 5/8" garden hose? If using a garden hose are they contributing to a loss of pressure that compromises water availability for trained fire fighters who actually know how to use it?
Have they spent any time on the initial attack of small fires or in igniting prescribed burns so they gradually get a gut feel for how fire behaves under a wide variety of circumstances? Have they been on small fires (1/4 to 1 acre) and have an unexpected blowup occur and experienced the helplessness of having heat, stinging eyes, and no visibility put you into a panic and nearly complete disorientation? It takes several years, perhaps more than 10, working in fire management, to develop the gut feel of fire enough to be able to make the sound decisions necessary to survive in a wildland fire environment.
When citizens stay and things go wrong then firefighters not only have their own safety to concern themselves with, they now have to take care of untrained people and possibly the vehicles they use to attempt an escape. Often those vehicles block the escape of fire apparatus. Things can go wrong real fast and even with a lot of training and experience the situation can be dicey. There is a lot about wildland fire that is not intuitive. Often during training when a concept is presented you think to yourself, "oh really, I would have thought just the opposite."
Some years ago there was an engine entrapment on a fire near Malibu involving a Glendale Fire Department engine crew. I have a very good friend who is a truck captain on the Glendale FD. One of the members of that engine crew survived extensive burns that would have killed almost anyone else. This man's name is Bill (sorry I don't remember his last name) and he often speaks to audiences of fire fighters in training sessions. I had the privilege of meeting this man and speaking with him one on one about 2-3 years ago. The story he tells and the suddenness that the situation presented itself to his crew are more scary if you have been on a few fires, both small and large, than it would be to a person with no experience.
Wildland fire is not something you can macho your way through while talking about how much fire and law enforcement agencies don't know when an evacuation order is imposed. Hot shot is a title that is earned under very difficult circumstances and not because you have a good line. Ignorance is not bliss in the case of wildland fire, it is death. Think this all is an exaggeration? Tell that to the wife and son of a college classmate of mine, Tony Czak, who died trying to save two panicked members of the Mormon Lake Hotshots on a fire in Colorado in 1976. Tell that to the widow and two children of my cousin who died when the chimney on a burned structure suddenly collapsed as he was assessing the needed safety zone for that chimney so his crew would be safe. Tell that to the citizens of Prineville, Oregon whose sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, and friends were among the 14 who died on a fire on Storm King Mountain in Colorado in 1993.
I will watch with a great deal of interest what type of policy changes may result here.
