Wild fires in the west, the season is upon us: here’s my 11-step plan
Wild fires in the west, the season is upon us, I have been reading about the fires in Utah, Arizona and California, what tragedies. It’s easy to understand how fires can burn so violently after a person spends time in an isolated area. Years ago a friend and I were in the Sierra on a camping/hiking trip, we passed through a canyon called “Cuenca Jose”. Jose Basin is a canyon about 1/2 mile wide and 2 miles long, not very big for a canyon. It is about 500 feet deep and filled to the brim with bone dry Manzanita. We stopped at the bottom, the canyon rose 1500 feet above us with a slope of about 22 degrees. We got out of the truck and looked at her talking about the danger of fire, it would be a huge fire. Being in the middle of nowhere, it will most likely burn down, I don’t know if it ever did, that was the last time I went up there. There are many places like José Cuenca in our country.
The fires got me thinking (again) about what I would do if we had a wildfire on our island that put my home in danger. What would you grab to get it out, how would you prioritize what you would grab, and how clearly would you be thinking? It seems like all bad things happen in the middle of the night, it seems like most home fires happen, I made a list of 11 things I would do:
1) Get up and get dressed, before I go to bed at night I make sure I have clothes next to my bed that are easy to put on.
2) Get my 95 year old mother-in-law up and out, make sure she also has her clothes on the night before.
3) Grab my emergency backpack, one of them has my laptop (my business is inside), medications and emergency plan inside.
OK, so far so good, makes sense.
4) Put my wheelchair away, okay, I guess it should be put away, I can walk a short distance to get away.
Now it’s starting to get risky
5) Save my guitars, see that it is plural, it is not a good sign. Which one will I take? They all grab them all.
6) I can not do without my banjo and ukulele, essential. (See where this is heading?)
7) Go out the door and dump everything in the dam, then come back for more! (oh oh)
8) Get my mobility scooter out of there now, another must have, don’t forget the charger!
9) I forgot the computer in the tower, it has all our photos.
10) I almost forgot the car keys, go get them and you better be quick.
11) The dog! I forgot about the dog!
Holy smokes! Now to reality, if I was trying to take all of that stuff, I would need a truck and a trailer to load it all up. Numbers 1-2 and 3, everything else is replaceable and insured. Take my backpack, find Grandma, put the dog on a leash and get out! I have convinced myself that I have less than a minute to do the few things I have planned, one minute. Oh man, my guitar would be hard to leave behind, but there are hundreds made every year, I’m sure I’d find replacements. My wheelchair and mobility scooter, well thousands are made every month. I can think of nothing more important than the grandmother, the wife, the dog and me. That is the importance of creating a disaster plan, including all possible emergency events in your area. Sometimes two or three plans are needed for different types of possible emergencies, however, most of the time one plan will suffice.
The wildfires I have seen, mostly on the news, burn so violently and move so fast that they leave very little time to think about our next moves. It appears that the fires close in on a structure causing it to burst into flames, leaving little time to escape. I came up with the one-minute rule after seeing a demonstration put on by the local fire department. (it was a video). Inside a simulated living room there was a Christmas tree, a sofa, a table and chairs. The tree caught fire, in less than 1 minute the whole room was filled with fire. (Watch the video here) If a person is asleep during this event, one minute is a long time for a fire to burn. I estimate that I have an escape time of only 1 minute, a very sobering thought.
The area around us is kept under control, people cut the weeds and are aware of the dangers. We are not immune, but the residents have it under control. There’s 200 acres of pasture across the road, kept pretty well in check by cattle. Across the river (it’s actually a quagmire) is about 500 acres of pasture, they catch fire from time to time, the caretaker quickly puts them out. Beyond the island, across the quagmire, is the “Devil Range” of mountains, it’s shredded wheat, a wild area from San Francisco all the way south to Grapevine, south of Bakersfield. It could burn forever, in fact I sit in my chair working and from time to time I see a forest fire on the side of the mountain, which quickly gets out of control.
Are there any proactive tasks we can take to eliminate the hazard? However, I am not sure, it is most likely that we will never be able to control or predict forest fires, we can do some things to reduce the damage. As a community we can keep entire rows of houses out of fire, perhaps where a development backs into wilderness beyond the back fence lies the danger, if weeds grow that far we can keep them under plough. Life in the mountains, extremely rural, tall trees surrounding the house, oh man, prevention would be difficult. Clearing the land within 100 feet of any structure would help, but then there are the reserve animals. It’s distressing just imagining it, I feel sorry for the people facing it as I write this.
So it brings back grandma, dog, wife, me and if I can grab my kit, well more power to me. I don’t think my guitars, ukes, banjo or computer is a hill I want to die on. The list is too easy to add and impossible to remove, prioritizing what’s important is the most important task in your evacuation plan. Forest fires are natural, they are fine as long as they are in a “wild” state, it is where they meet civilization that the problem starts. Wildfires always leave me with the thought “man, I wish I could help.”
What do you think, what would you grab? Do you have a plan? Do you have emergency backpacks installed in convenient places? Maybe you live where there is no threat of wildfires, that’s a good place to be.