SPOKANE, Wash. — Residents of Spokane’s Grandview Thorpe neighborhood participated in a mock evacuation drill Saturday morning to test their readiness for wildfires in an area surrounded by dry fuels.
The drill sent alerts to hundreds of neighborhood residents through the Spokane Alert system.
“The wildfire is certainly one concern, but more than that, it’s just physically getting in and out of our neighborhood,” said Tina Leurssen, a Grandview Thorpe resident who participated in the drill.
Leurssen was at home when her phone received the first alert: “Exercise, level two get set to leave.” Five minutes later, a second alert arrived: “Get out now.”
The neighborhood has extremely limited access points, and Leurssen says residents are forced to use a single intersection to exit, which locals have nicknamed “malfunction junction.”
“City planners don’t understand the terror of when you get an evacuation notice, and you can’t evacuate because you can’t go that way,” Leurssen explained, referencing a fire from two years ago when neighbors went through a messy evacuation process.
Sarah Nuss, Director of Emergency Management for the City of Spokane, helped facilitate the drill.
“Though it’s an exercise, people do take that seriously,” Nuss said. “This is a way to help people learn how to feel they are in control and have the agency to prepare and take care of themselves.”
The timing of the drill is significant as a year-long moratorium banning new home construction in the area ends in a few weeks. Signs throughout the neighborhood advertise new large developments coming soon.
“This traffic from all the new homes and everything coming in, it’s going to go across that bridge where you can’t even drive a garbage truck,” Leurssen said. “That’s really concerning. It’s the way that I drive my kids every day, and that’s really scary.”
Since the previous fire, the Grandview Thorpe neighborhood has been pushing city leaders to make infrastructure changes to prevent evacuation problems from happening again. They hope this drill highlights what they consider a life-threatening problem.
The City of Spokane will release data from the drill next week.
For more information on emergency alerts and how to Spokane, go here.
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