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The other day I was reading this article about the destruction of Paradise California by the Camp fire. It's a long article, but what struck me is this: local officials planned for the scale of disaster that they could deal with, not the scale of disaster that was possible.
As a result, when the Camp fire hit, most of the procedures in place to deal with the fire and evacuation proved inadequate. Based on the article, we're lucky that there were "only" 86 people killed. Many people were trapped in town and had to improvise shelter.
It's easy to fault the local officials. But what they did (or didn't do) was a very typical human response. If the worst that can happen is beyond your abilities to deal with it, don't bother planning for it.
Many years and many pounds ago, I was in the US Navy. Prior to my commissioning, the Navy had seen several events, such as the USS Stark and the USS Samuel B. Roberts, where the worst case in terms of damage had happened. As a result, we had "conflagration drills." These were training exercises where everything that could go wrong did, and then we had to deal with it. These drills weren't fun, were held infrequently, but proved very helpful.
More importantly, they got us out of the mindset of not planning for the worst case.
As a result, when the Camp fire hit, most of the procedures in place to deal with the fire and evacuation proved inadequate. Based on the article, we're lucky that there were "only" 86 people killed. Many people were trapped in town and had to improvise shelter.
It's easy to fault the local officials. But what they did (or didn't do) was a very typical human response. If the worst that can happen is beyond your abilities to deal with it, don't bother planning for it.
Many years and many pounds ago, I was in the US Navy. Prior to my commissioning, the Navy had seen several events, such as the USS Stark and the USS Samuel B. Roberts, where the worst case in terms of damage had happened. As a result, we had "conflagration drills." These were training exercises where everything that could go wrong did, and then we had to deal with it. These drills weren't fun, were held infrequently, but proved very helpful.
More importantly, they got us out of the mindset of not planning for the worst case.