Seriously what the hell is going on in Oregon….
Oregon initially said 500,000 people had been evacuated because of wildfires. The numbers didn’t add up – and the state backtracked.
The number of Oregonians told to evacuate because of unprecedented wildfires is more than 40,000 – not the 500,000 residents initially and erroneously announced by Oregon’s Office of Emergency Management, Gov. Kate Brown acknowledged Friday following publication of an analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive showing the true number of evacuations to be far lower.
The state in a news release Thursday night said an “estimated 500,000 Oregonians have been evacuated and that number continues to grow.”
That would be an astounding number, exceeding 10% of the state’s 4.2 million population. It’s so large, in fact, that it would be the equivalent of every single person living in Gresham, Hillsboro, Beaverton, Tigard, Lake Oswego, Oregon City, Tualatin and West Linn.
But a newsroom analysis found far fewer people actually live in the Level 3 evacuation zones identified in state mapping for mandatory evacuations.
The newsroom estimated only about 95,000 people live in zones where residents are supposed to evacuate. Even under the most conservative estimates, the number appeared to be no higher than 200,000.
State officials on Friday initially defended their estimates, saying they were based on Level 3 areas.
“It’s certainly not under 100,000,” said Lauren Wirtis, a spokeswoman for the state’s Joint Information Center. “Five-hundred-thousand is the estimate we have based on the population density we have in those areas.”
Wirtis said she could not immediately provide more details about the state’s methodology used to calculate the estimate, adding that “'population density' is the most specific I can be right now.”
Wirtis said the state would consider a request from the newsroom to provide the underlying calculations.
“This is an incredibly tragic situation and I don’t want us to get so lost in the detail of the exact number that we forget that these are people who don’t have homes anymore,” Wirtis said.
But Oregon’s governor on Friday afternoon clarified that only about 40,000 Oregonians had been evacuated, with 500,000 total under some sort of notice to evacuate or to prepare for evacuation.
“More than 40,000 Oregonians have been evacuated," Brown said during a news conference. "And approximately 500,000 Oregonians are currently in evacuation zones – that means 500,000 people are either at a Level 1, 2 or 3 evacuation alert.”
Andrew Phelps, director of Oregon’s Office of Management, seemed to acknowledge the glaring mistake Friday.
“I also understand how important these numbers are to the public," he said during a news conference. "We’ve got a lot of numbers associated with this disaster, and we’re committed to getting these numbers right. And we’re going to be working to ensure that every time we release numbers, those numbers are factual and confirmed.”
The state’s erroneous evacuation estimate had been plastered across national media Friday morning. An online headline in the Washington Post declared: “Half a million Oregonians, more than 10 percent of the state’s population, have evacuated from wildfires.” The headline topping The New York Times’ website read: “Oregon Orders 500,000 to Evacuate as Fires Near Portland Suburbs.”
https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/09/oregon-said-500000-people-have-been-evacuated-because-of-wildfires-the-numbers-dont-add-up.html