CITY OF AGOURA HILLS PLANNING COMMISSION APPROVES DANGEROUS EVACUATION ANALYSIS
An analysis of the City's Evacuation Plan and the updated Evacuation Analysis is presented below. The Evacuation Analysis was considered and approved by the City's Planning Commission on May 1, 2025, pending final approval by the City Council.
A video of the Planning Commission meeting can be found here.
*The Agoura Hills Evacuation Analysis document can be found by scrolling to the bottom of this page.
The Evacuation Analysis states five times ( Pg 2, par 3; Pg 3, par 1; Pg 3, par 2; Pg 7, new par 1 and Pg 13, par 1) that it complies with Government code section 65302 (AB 747) because it includes the safety interests of the community "unincorporated Los Angeles County south of the city" (meaning the residents of Agoura or Cornell in the Santa Monica Mountains). During the oral presentation at the Planning Commission meeting on May 1, 2025, the same claim was made at 15:21, 18:16, 19:17 and 27:30 in the YouTube video linked above..
We find that this is a misrepresentation and that the safety concerns of the community of unincorporated Los Angeles County south of the city are not considered in the city's Evacuation Analysis.
Here's why:
1.) The analysis excludes KANAN ROAD south of and including the intersection of KANAN & AGOURA ROADS.
How can an Evacuation Analysis consider the evacuation safety of a population of residents yet ignore their known evacuation route?
Discussion: According to a 2022 study conducted by the City of Agoura Hills, it took 80 minutes for residents of the Santa Monica Mountains (residents of unincorporated Los Angeles County south of the city) to evacuate 3 miles north on Kanan Road to the 101 Freeway onramp during the Woolsey Fire. However, both the city's Evacuation Plan and Evacuation Analysis exclude this critical last segment of Kanan Road that lies within Agoura Hills city limits, between the county line and the 101 Freeway.
Notice the lack of blue arrows on the map to the right.
For the full report, click here. The table is found on page 6.
2.) The "CENTER OF ZONE" Misrepresentation
A 2022 report by consultants Kimley-Horn found that Santa Monica Mountains evacuees — residents of unincorporated Los Angeles County south of the City — took approximately 70–80 minutes to travel just three miles north on Kanan Road to reach the US-101 Freeway during the Woolsey Fire.
Yet in the City’s 2025 Evacuation Analysis, the same population is projected to evacuate from the center of the same evacuation zone in as little as 2:16–11:48 minutes.
Discussion: The 2022 chart (left), prepared for the City by Kimley-Horn using anonymized cellular data, documents real-world evacuation times during the Woolsey Fire. It shows that Santa Monica Mountains residents required up to 80 minutes to reach the Kanan Road onramp.
The chart below, taken from the 2025 Evacuation Analysis — also prepared by Kimley-Horn — estimates evacuation times for multiple populations, including residents south of the City, traveling from the center of their evacuation zones to the nearest US-101 onramps.
Logically, if Santa Monica Mountain evacuees needed 70–80 minutes to travel from the southern edge of the zone to the freeway during an actual wildfire, travel from the center of that same zone would reasonably be expected to take at least 35–40 minutes, particularly under full Housing Overlay buildout conditions assumed in the Analysis.
Instead, the Analysis reports evacuation times of just 2–11 minutes for Zones 7 and 8.
These dramatically reduced times appear to result from the Analysis omitting the final and most critical segment of Kanan Road that evacuees must traverse to reach the freeway without explaining how evacuees arrived there nor accounting for the time required to do so.
The remaining routes identified that logically apply to this population in the Analysis —
Route 7: Agoura Road & Reyes Adobe to US-101
Route 8: Agoura Road & Chesebro to US-101 —
provide no explanation of how Santa Monica Mountains residents access these roadways, nor do they incorporate the travel time necessary to reach them.
Despite the City’s repeated assertion that the Evacuation Analysis complies with state law by evaluating the effects of high-density development along the very section of Kanan Road that is left out of the Analysis, its omission demonstrates that the safety of unincorporated Los Angeles County residents south of the City was not meaningfully analyzed.
As written, the City’s Evacuation Plan and Analysis present a significant and unacceptable risk to this population.
3.) VERY RISKY "PLAN"
What Happens to The PEOPLE Who Take Kanan Road?
2.) A Misleading and Dangerous Evacuation Plan
Reliance on Manual Traffic Control Creates a Predictable and Unanalyzed Failure Scenario
The City’s Evacuation Plan depends heavily on traffic being manually diverted away from Kanan Road by City personnel during an emergency. However, the City has acknowledged that it does not have sufficient staff to implement this strategy. What's most concerning is what happens when that strategy inevitably breaks down.
Discussion: The evacuation map for Agoura Hills depicts traffic being routed away from Kanan Road toward the Reyes Adobe and Chesebro onramps via Agoura Road, which runs parallel to the US-101 Freeway. Long directional arrows reinforce that this diversion is central to the Plan’s success. On May 1, 2025, the Planning Commission was told that City employees would be stationed throughout the community to direct motorists along these prescribed routes during an evacuation.
Yet when asked whether the City could reliably staff such an operation, a City official stated: “We cannot commit to being in all places at all times. We're a small city with a small staff.” — Planning Commission Meeting, 5/1/25 (52:40 in YouTube video here.)
This candid acknowledgment directly undermines the feasibility of the strategy. The plan cannot be guaranteed and is inherently unreliable — particularly during a fast-moving wildfire when communications can fail and resources are stretched thin.
Most importantly, the Analysis does not evaluate the foreseeable consequence of this staffing limitation. When drivers are not actively redirected, evacuation behavior defaults to familiar routes. For most evacuees that route is Kanan Road. The predictable result will funnel vehicles back onto this already constrained evacuation corridor: Despite this reality, Kanan is conspicuously omitted from this scenario and is not meaningfully analyzed as the roadway most likely to absorb overflow traffic if diversion fails.
In effect, the Plan relies on diverting traffic away from Kanan while simultaneously failing to analyze the consequences if that diversion doesn't work — a scenario the City itself admits is plausible.
By leaving the performance of a vulnerable primary evacuation corridor like Kanan Road unexamined under likely real-world conditions, the Plan effectively places the fate of Kanan Road — and the populations who depend upon it — in dangerous uncertainty rather than preparedness.
An evacuation strategy that functions only under ideal staffing conditions, while failing to evaluate the corridor that will predictably carry overflow traffic, cannot be relied upon as a life-safety plan.
4.) Another important reason to include this section of Kanan Road in this analysis...
It encompasses the intersection of Kanan & Agoura roads which is flanked on either side two of the three highest-density projects south of the 101 Freeway.
Discussion: As seen on the map of housing sites, two of the highest density sites south of the 101 Freeway, Site A and Site B, are planned for the south-east and south-west corners of the intersection of Kanan & Agoura Roads. Site A has been approved for a highest potential unit value of at least 309 units and with density bonus could be as high as 410 apartments. Site B has recently been approved for 238 apartments, some 3-story, some 4 story.
To exclude this section of Kanan Road disregards the impact of the traffic generated by these projects.
In fact, it appears this analysis may exclude all traffic generated by residents of the new housing south of the 101 Freeway AND pre-existing housing south of the 101, west of Liberty Canyon. See number 5, below.
5.) Mutually Exclusive Populations
It appears that either the population of unincorporated LA County south of the city OR the populations of new housing + preexisting housing in the southern part of the City of Agoura Hills (west of Liberty Canyon) have been left out of this analysis. These groups would taken the same routes and the numbers provided simply don't support both populations.
Discussion: At the 5/1/25 presentation before the Planning Commission, Denice Thomas and Matt Stewart stated several times that the population of "unincorporated Los Angeles County south of the city" was represented by approximately 2000 vehicles. To the right is the same chart shown on page 10 of the city's Evacuation Analysis. The highlighted routes are the only logical routes to be traveled by either the residents of unincorporated LA County south of the city and/or the residents of the new housing developments PLUS the existing Agoura Hills residents who live in the southern part of the City of Agoura Hills.
IF the residents of unincorporated LA County south of the City are represented by 2000 vehicles ("1762" in scenario 2), where are the vehicles from the residents of the new housing sites and preexisting homes in the southern part of Agoura Hills?
It looks like one or the other of these populations has been left out. The numbers provided simply can't support both populations.
This means that either the City is out of compliance because it ignores consideration of the safety of the population of unincorporated LA County south of the City that it claims repeatedly to include, or it leaves out the vehicles of almost 75% of it's housing sites which defeats the purpose of providing an analysis of safe evacuation after full build-out.
6.) CITY OF MALIBU'S MASS EVACUATION PLAN
* It is difficult to estimate how many vehicles Malibu residents could represent during evacuation of a given fire or other disaster. According the the city's website, the 2010 census showed a population of 12,645 and presumed 2.58 people per household. Traffic studies use an average of 2.4 vehicles per household in Southern California. Therefore, based on population figures that are 15 years old that could be roughly 32,624 vehicles for Malibu. If only 10% of Malibu residents used Kanan Road in a disaster that could add as many as 3000 vehicles to Kanan Road.
The ONLY thing that matters is that traffic is moving smoothly through the intersection at Kanan & Agoura Roads and at both onramps at the 101 Freeway.
The Agoura Hills Evacuation Analysis completely ignores additional vehicles evacuating north on Kanan Road, through the intersection of Kanan & Agoura roads to the 101 Freeway onramps from the city of Malibu.
Discussion: In 2020, the City of Malibu formalized a Mass Evacuation Plan that designated Kanan Road as one of the five official evacuation routes to be utilized in the event of disaster. Below, from page 7 of the City of Malibu's Mass Evacuation Plan:
"EVACUATION ROUTES
These are the five main evacuation routes to be utilized:
1) NB Pacific Coast Hwy (to Oxnard)
2) Kanan Rd
3) Malibu Canyon Rd
4) Topanga Canyon Rd(only as needed)
5) SB Pacific Coast Hwy (to LA / I-10)
Due to roadway conditions and existing population, every effort shall be made to avoid routing evacuation traffic onto Topanga Canyon Rd, and all other options should be exhausted first."
The City of Agoura Hills is quite aware of this Mass Evacuation Plan, yet there is no mention of it or its potential impact upon Kanan Road and the Kanan Road -101 onramps during evacuation in this Evacuation Analysis.
More about Malibu's Mass Evacuation Plan can be found by clicking here.