Fire researcher: only a matter of time before a city has to be evacuated
Enrico Ronchi, a fire researcher and evacuation expert, has long warned that wildfires will eventually affect cities that may need to be evacuated. Although Bordeaux was spared, it is only a matter of time before a densely populated urban area in Europe has to be evacuated. Wildfires are here to stay.
– Published 1 August 2026
What is required to evacuate a city?
“Evacuation can become an enormous challenge when roads are congested or blocked by fire and smoke. That is why communities need well-prepared traffic management strategies, as well as shelters and temporary refuges that are strategically located and integrated into evacuation plans. Well-placed shelters can reduce people’s exposure to danger, whereas poorly located shelters can actually increase risks. This demonstrates the importance of careful planning, not merely identifying where shelters are located.
Early warning also plays a crucial role. Experience has shown the dramatic consequences that can arise when people are evacuated too late.”
If a city is damaged by wildfire, what happens then? Where are people supposed to go?
“The most vulnerable areas are the so-called wildland-urban interface, where residential developments meet vegetation. As urbanization increases in these areas, wildfires are becoming an ever-greater threat to people.
Planning for wildfires cannot stop at evacuation routes; it must also include destinations and places of refuge where people can seek safety during an ongoing fire or, in extreme cases, before a fire occurs. This can take the form of so-called shadow evacuation, where residents leave their homes in advance because the area is assessed to be at very high risk of wildfire.”
Which parts of the world are best at handling large-scale evacuations?
“Large-scale wildfire evacuations are a well-known challenge in many parts of the world. However, the number of people forced to leave their homes in Europe this year is unprecedented. Until just a few years ago, the largest evacuations typically involved no more than a few thousand people. Now we are talking about tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands.
The United States is a pioneer in this area. The 2018 Camp Fire is a good example of how an evacuation involving around 50,000 people was managed. Another leading country is Canada, which experienced its first extremely large-scale evacuation during the Fort McMurray wildfire in 2016, when nearly 90,000 people were forced to leave their homes.
A third example is Australia, which learned hard lessons from the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, in which many people lost their lives. The disaster prompted a reassessment of the country’s previous ‘stay and defend or leave early’ policy. Since then, there has been extensive debate about the need, whenever possible, to implement a strategy of early evacuation.”
Does Sweden have the expertise required?
“In Sweden, there is no legal requirement for communities or cities to plan evacuation routes specifically for wildfires. Nor is the number of homes that can be built in an area determined by whether evacuation capacity is sufficient.
The positive side is that Sweden is currently strengthening its civil defence in response to other threats, and that will also benefit preparedness for wildfire evacuations. Although the threats may differ, the challenges of planning for large-scale population movements are quite similar across different scenarios.”
Enrico Ronchi in the Lund University research portal (including contact details):
https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/enrico-ronchi/