I'm not native English speaker. Though, I've been challenged by this question, while watching the Wire as well, especially cause we (in French) have the exact same verb (evacuer), and I was pretty sure this one could be used with the structure "to evacuate people". I checked, and my French dictionnary effectively confirmed my initial thought.
It seems, after reading you, that the same goes for English. For the ones who argued that there has to be an adverbial phrase of place like "from the building", I would like to had this example taken from the Merriam-Webster online (therefore similar source as the one presented in The Wire):
"People who live along the coast are being evacuated as the hurricane approaches."
Here the place is precised as a relative clause and not as an adverbial phrase of place. And this relative clause can grammaticaly be removed to give "people are being evacuated as the hurricane approaches". So "to evacuate people" seems legit also in English.
This said, maybe it "sounds" weird for an English speaker to evacuate people, and that's why some you might remain reluctant (if some people can answer me on this, cause in French it sounds perfectly legit) (sorry for any grammar mistakes, or poor english, as I said I'm not native speaker but our languages have similarities, at least on this word, so I thought an external point of view would be interesting).
]]>I believe - from memory - during the scene, the editor actually read out loud "the Fire Department evacuated 120 people". This is grammatically wrong.
But if it was "the Fire Department evacuated 120 people from the building" as you have been writing in your article - then I think this should be allowed.
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