“...the people were not alerted when it started....”
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That’s true from what I heard. And the horrifying reason given was that they didn’t want to create traffic jams. WTF?
I read that the automatica alert system wasn’t used because it was a huge wide alert system - iow, went to areas that weren’t needing to be evacuated, so more people would have gotten the alert, than needed to evacuate. For one. For another thing, directions to evacuate to were different in different places since there were so many fires starting all at the same time (another factor...) and so people may have gone right into an area with fire heading towards it.
IOW it was a mess because the alert system was not fine tuned enough to warn bits and pieces of areas, nor, afaik, fine tuned enough to give people the directions of where to go.
Add to that the incredible speed of the wind blowing the fire and it was just beyond human capacity to be able to get everyone out of the way.
I’m sure things could have been done better (they always can be better) but from what I’ve read, not being there, there wasn’t any gross mismanagement. And the fires, many of them, may indeed have been arson.