Most existing studies of wildfire evacuations focus on vehicle-owning households and assume that evacuees will use their personal vehicles while evacuating. However, no studies have collected near real-time data on transit riders’ evacuation behavior or their adaptation behavior immediately post-evacuation.
While much attention in the literature has focused on wildfire evacuation disparities tied to transportation and communications infrastructure and policy needs, limited focus has been on the transportation- and infrastructure-related needs to support recovery and resilience from wildfire events, and for vulnerable communities.
The goal of this project is to review and synthesize existing research on the challenges faced by older adults with disabilities during and after wildfire evacuations. This includes an examination of transportation-related issues, which are often a significant barrier to safe and timely evacuations. Our aim is to identify gaps in the current literature, highlight areas of future research, and explore policy implications that can improve preparedness, evacuation, and resilience for this vulnerable population.
A race to rebuild transportation infrastructure may preclude or increase the cost of other community-defined priorities that could emerge during the long recovery process. Once roadway repairs and reconstruction are underway, it becomes more difficult to pursue alternative transportation pathways, such as building complete streets or designing grids for more effective evacuation. The task of rebuilding therefore requires a community engagement process that is broader in scope than what transportation agencies typically use to promote public participation in transportation decision making.
Wildfires disproportionately impact vulnerable communities, such as low-income families, older adults, people with disabilities, and rural residents. Wildfires not only cause direct destruction, but also intensify existing social inequities (Davies et al., 2018). The primary challenges these groups face lie in inadequate transportation resources to carry out evacuations, non-resilient infrastructure, and inequitable allocations of recovery resources. This brief synthesizes news reports, academic research, and practical case studies and recommends three priority strategies to support efforts to recover from the recent wildfires in Los Angeles County: 1) developing an inclusive evacuation system, 2) allocating resources for community recovery in a fair and equitable manner, and 3) building resilient community transportation systems for the future. These strategies can reduce social inequalities in disaster response and recovery. Background The January 2025 Eaton and Palisades wildfires in Los Angeles County were the first and second most destructive in California’s history (Hanna Park et al., 2025). They caused unprecedented destruction, resulting in 29 fatalities, the loss of 18,000 homes, and forced more than 200,000 residents to evacuate from the affected areas. The wildfires also caused power outages for 414,000 households, and resulted in economic damages exceeding $50 billion (Albani-Burgi, 2025). Although neither [...]
Issue The connectivity of local streets shapes travel choices for residents and the long-term resilience of cities. In neighborhoods with connected streets — characterized by a grid or similar pattern with direct walking routes and few dead ends — residents walk more and own fewer cars. Where streets are disconnected — for example, in hillside canyons or gated communities — the private car is typically the only option. And once laid down, street patterns rarely change, even after wartime bombing, fires, earthquakes, and other disasters. We quantified the connectivity of streets worldwide using a composite indicator — the Street-Network Disconnected index (SNDi) — that quantifies and captures the circuity of walking routes, the fraction of dead ends, and other network characteristics of street connectivity. Higher values of SNDi mean less connected (more disconnected) streets such as those in a gated community or cul-de-sac neighborhood, while lower values are found in grid-like and similar patterns. Here, we focus on some of the trends and the implications for urban resilience, especially for wildfire risk in California. Key Research Findings Neighborhoods with the highest wildfire risk have the least connected streets. Previous research shows that connected streets help residents [...]
