Evacuation Center Information

What is evacuation?

Evacuation is a strategy used to reduce loss of life or lessen the effects of a hazard on a community, before or during a disaster. It involves the movement of people threatened by a hazard to a safer location and their safe and timely return. Removal of people from the threat is often the most effective way to manage public safety. For an evacuation to be as effective as possible it must be appropriately planned and implemented. Depending on the hazard and its impacts on communities, the evacuation process may take days, weeks or months to complete. Some evacuations may be carried out quickly and over short distances.

• For example, people may be warned to: · move to higher ground pending a potential tsunami impact, or flash flooding
•  move two streets away from a rural-urban interface to avoid a bushfire.

In other circumstances, people evacuated from an area may be relocated many kilometres from their home and be unable to return for a considerable period of time due to access or contamination issues.

Types of evacuation

There are two types of evacuation described in this handbook, pre-warned and immediate. Both evacuation types have distinctive characteristics, challenges and different planning dynamics and responses.

1. Pre-warned evacuation: where a community has been provided with a warning of the impending hazard impact and a timely and coordinated preparedness and response actions have been facilitated in accordance with an evacuation plan. E.g. flood, cyclone or bushfire.

2. Immediate evacuation: where a rapid onset hazard causes a threat with no or limited opportunity to warn the affected individuals or communities. These events require immediate and rapid protective movements of those affected. E.g. earthquake, structural collapse, gas explosion, active shooter or transport accident. With increasingly complex, concurrent and compounding events there may be a need for a two-step evacuation process in both an immediate and a pre-warned evacuation scenario. In this scenario:

· Step 1: move communities move out of harm’s way from the hazard.

· Step 2: when the risk dissipates relocate communities to an evacuation centre(s).

Evacuation approaches

The type of evacuation selected by the organisation managing the emergency will be influenced by whether the emergency is rapid onset, requiring immediate evacuation, or whether it is slow onset or pre-warned, allowing more time for the implementation of evacuation approaches.