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Everyone's focused on the barricades (orange cones from the sound of it) but this caught my eye at the end: > “The gridlock would have left us there when the f

Everyone's focused on the barricades (orange cones from the sound of it) but this caught my eye at the end: > “The gridlock would have left us there when the firestorm came,” Cuevas-Reyes, 38, told the AP. “I would have had to tell my children to jump into the ocean as well and be boiled alive by the flames or we would have just died from smoke inhalation and roasted in the car.” That kind of gridlock is why we have all of those giant stroads everyone loves to complain about every few blocks in California. A few years ago my house was one mile from a wildfire in SoCal and the two lane road was overwhelmed during the evacuation despite only supporting a small exurban population. Now at my new suburban house, the neighboring development recently got halted after only building out 20% of the units because the fire marshal calculated that our surrounding roads wouldn't be able to support the traffic in case of evacuation. The developer is trying to get a new freeway on-ramp approved atm, otherwise they'll have to switch from dense 5-over-1s to single family homes in the rest of the development. This is a reminder for everyone to download and print out the evacuation routes and tape them to the inside of your door! When done correctly, they're carefully designed to allow as many people to get out as fast as possible without causing gridlock while still allowing emergency vehicles in. Unfortunately this is all carried out at the state and local level so it takes a tragedy like Lahaina for people to really start investing in proper (sub)urban and emergency planning.

Drunk_Engineer 3y ago
All it takes is one fallen power line or tree to turn that stroad into a giant parking lot of death. Cutting back brush and undergrounding power lines is much more cost-effective than building stroads up into the hillsides.
- civilitty 3y ago
  Cutting back brush and putting powerlines underground doesn't help people evacuate during a natural disaster, it just removes two ways a single type of natural disaster can spread. Everyone living in an area needs enough space to evacuate fast enough to get away from natural disasters safely. It doesn't matter if there's a downed power line when no one can get out due to gridlock even in the best case scenario. Everyone's gotta be able to get out fast enough.
- gamblor956 3y ago
  The AP article cited notes that the "barricades" were in many cases downed live power and telephone lines: "The utility says more than 30 power poles are down in West Maui, including along the Honoapiilani Highway at the south end of Lahaina." (That Highway aka Highway 30) was the main southern route out of town.) "A telephone pole falls behind their car, causing an accident and blocking a side street."

Drunk_Engineer 3y ago

All it takes is one fallen power line or tree to turn that stroad into a giant parking lot of death. Cutting back brush and undergrounding power lines is much more cost-effective than building stroads up into the hillsides.

civilitty 3y ago
Cutting back brush and putting powerlines underground doesn't help people evacuate during a natural disaster, it just removes two ways a single type of natural disaster can spread. Everyone living in an area needs enough space to evacuate fast enough to get away from natural disasters safely. It doesn't matter if there's a downed power line when no one can get out due to gridlock even in the best case scenario. Everyone's gotta be able to get out fast enough.
gamblor956 3y ago
The AP article cited notes that the "barricades" were in many cases downed live power and telephone lines: "The utility says more than 30 power poles are down in West Maui, including along the Honoapiilani Highway at the south end of Lahaina." (That Highway aka Highway 30) was the main southern route out of town.) "A telephone pole falls behind their car, causing an accident and blocking a side street."