Analyzing the chances of evacuation in the 2018 Mati Fire
- 1Imperial College London, Mechanical Engineering, London, United Kingdom (g.rein@imperial.ac.uk)
- 2RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC 3000, Australia
- 3Department of Fire Safety Engineering and Systems Safety, Lund University, Sweden
The 2018 Mati wildfire in Greece caused 104 fatalities, leading to national mourning and a change in Greek wildfire policy. Dry conditions, strong winds, and limited evacuation routes led to a late evacuation, with people trapped in the path of the wildfire. Evacuating from wildfires is crucial for saving lives, but timing and planning is key. Dire evacuations happen when there is no time to evacuate from a wildfire, but people attempt to do so, resulting in entrapment and loss of life. This presentation studies Mati using trigger boundaries, to examine whether an evacuation with no casualties was possible. Trigger boundaries relate the required time to evacuate a community to the available time until a wildfire reaches the community. Analyzing past wildfires with trigger boundaries can help understand what went wrong and improve future evacuation strategies for at-risk communities.
How to cite: Kalogeropoulos, N., Mitchell, H., Kuligowski, E., Ronchi, E., and Rein, G.: Analyzing the chances of evacuation in the 2018 Mati Fire , 18th Plinius Conference on Mediterranean Risks, Chania, Greece, 30 Sep–3 Oct 2024, Plinius18-32, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-plinius18-32, 2024.
