A survey is being done by researchers at the University of California, Davis looking into types of communication that occurred during the Camp Fire evacuation.
The research is examining ways to establish better communication techniques, faster response of shelter availability and the availably of resources that evacuees are able to deploy in a disaster. Sarah Grajdura is a doctoral student working on the project.
“We want to know like at the different stages: before, during and after, how did you update yourself? Or if you were evening trying to update yourself about information were you trying to tune into the T.V. or tune into the radio? Or were you checking Facebook? Checking Twitter? Were you calling people?” she said.
Grajdura said splitting the survey up into the three time categories will hopefully allow the research team to see if behaviors change at differing points in a crisis. She said her team is trying to get participants to take the survey as quickly as possible before they forget any specifics of the evacuation.
“We know it’s a really sensitive topic, but we also know that a lot of these details that were are interested in like ‘How long did your trip take?” and stuff like that we know that does decay with memory,” she said. “So that’s why we’re really interested in doing this right now just to kind of get these details before they’re lost.”
The survey contains about 50 questions. You can take it in person, by emailing Grajdura: sagrajdura@ucdavis.edu or online.