this was a slowly growing evacuation - as opposed to everyone all at once.

i think the dense smoke in front of the fires prodded and made believers out of the non-believers.

as did the news flow - which is now fading fast.

katrina memory played a part.

here in socal you need a car - but not everyone drives a late model escalade, no matter what tv says. it's minimum specs in our far flung area of the country to have wheels. and people could travel at will.

as mentioned above, you could retreat close by the area and still have services of daily living.