More evidence that rural communities don't have the infrastructure to deal with natural disasters, including providing warnings

When the fires in Sonoma and Mendocino counties in California broke out last fall, media coverage eventually revealed that the warnings systems in the rural reaches of this region had not gotten notice of the fire to many residents.  The Los Angeles Times provided excellent coverage then, as in a story by Joe Mozingo, which was the focus of this blog post.  Now, the New York Times is offering similar revelations about the Camp Fire in Butte County.  Simon Romero, Tim Arango and Thomas Fuller report under the headline, "A Frantic Call, a Neighbor's Knock, but Few Official Alerts as Wildfire Closed In." 

In the frenzied first hours of the Camp Fire, which reduced Paradise to ashes and is the deadliest wildfire in modern California history, only a fraction of people living near the fire received alerts or evacuation orders from local authorities.

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In the weeks and months ahead, officials across the state will grapple with the question of whether more people could have been alerted sooner, perhaps saving more lives.

Many of those who barely made it to safety already have their answer. 

“They totally dropped the ball on this,” [Matthew] White [who was awakened the morning of the fire by a friend's call to his cell phone] said, of the authorities. “Look, all these people dead, all these people missing. It’s like they decided to forget about us. Like we weren’t worth saving.” 

The decision to issue alerts and evacuation orders rests with local authorities, and as the Camp Fire began on Nov. 8, the Butte County Sheriff’s Department decided to use what experts say is an outdated system — called Code Red — to notify residents of danger with a phone call. 

But only residents who sign up for the service receive alerts — and only a fraction of them had. The decision not to issue an Amber Alert-style message, a federal government system that could reach all cellular phones in the area, was partly out of fear of causing panic and traffic jams on the one main roadway out of Paradise, according to Kory L. Honea, the Butte County sheriff.

Read more about the Camp Fire and its aftermath here and here.