By 
Wildfires in the west, the season is upon us, I’ve 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 José”. 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 completely dry Manzanita. We stopped at the bottom, the canyon rising to a height of 1500 feet above us with a slope of about 22 degrees. We got out of the truck and looked at her talking about the fire hazard, it would be a huge fire. Being in the middle of nowhere it will most likely burn, 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 in case we had a wildfire on our island that put my house in danger. What would you grab to get it out, how would you prioritize what you would take, and how clearly would you be thinking? It seems like all the bad things happen in the middle of the night, it seems like most house 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 laid out next to my bed that are easy to put on.
2) Pick up my 95 year old mother in law, make sure she has her clothes on the night before too.
3) I grabbed my emergency backpack, one of them has my laptop (my business is inside), medicines and an emergency plan inside.
OK, so far so good, makes sense.
4) Put my wheelchair away, ok, I guess it should be put away, I can walk a short distance so I can escape.
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? All of them grab them all.
6) I can’t do without my banjo and ukulele, essentials. (See where this is headed?)
7) Walk out the door and dump everything in the levee, then come back for more! (ow ow)
8) Get my mobility scooter out of there now, another must-have, don’t forget the charger!
9) I forgot the tower computer, it has all our photos.
10) I almost forgot my car keys, go get them and you better be quick.
11) The dog! I forgot about the dog!
Holy fumes! Now to reality, if I try to take all those things, I would need a truck and a trailer to load it all. Numbers 1-2 and 3, everything else is replaceable and insured. Take my backpack, find Grandma, put the leash on the dog 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 hundreds are made every year, I’m sure I’d find replacements. My wheelchair and mobility scooter, well thousands are made every month. I can’t think of anything more important than Grandma, the wife, the dog and me. That is the importance of creating a disaster plan, which includes all possible emergency events in your area. Sometimes two or three plans are needed for different types of potential emergencies, however most of the time one plan will suffice.
The wildfires I’ve seen, mostly on the news, burn so violently and move so fast that they leave very little time to think about our next moves. The fires appear to approach a structure causing it to burst into flames, leaving little time to escape. I came up with the one minute rule after watching a demo put on by the local fire department. (it was a video). Inside a simulated living room were a Christmas tree, sofa, table and chairs. The tree caught fire, in less than 1 minute the whole room was on fire. (See video here) If a person is asleep during this event, one minute is a long time for a fire to burn. I estimate I have an exhaust time of only 1 minute, a very sobering thought.
The area around us is kept under control, people cut weeds and are aware of the dangers. We’re not immune, but the residents have it under control. There’s 200 acres of pasture across the road, it’s kept pretty well in check by the cattle. Across the river (it’s actually a quagmire) is about 500 acres of pasture, they catch fire from time to time, promptly put out by the caretaker. Beyond the island, on the other side of the quagmire, is the “Devil’s Range” of mountains, it’s shredded wheat, a wilderness area from San Francisco as far south as the grapevine, south of Bakersfield. It could burn forever, in fact I sit in my chair working and every once in a while I see a forest fire on the side of the mountain, which quickly gets out of control.
Is there a proactive task we can do to eliminate the hazard? However, I’m not sure, most likely we will never be able to control or predict wildfires, we can perform some tasks to lessen the damage. As a community we can keep entire rows of houses out of the fire, perhaps where a development backs up into wilderness beyond the back fence lies danger, if weeds grow up there we can keep them under plough. Life in the mountains, extremely rural, tall trees surrounding the house, oh man, prevention would be hard. Clearing the ground within 100 feet of any structure would help, but then there are the reserve animals. It’s distressing just to imagine, I feel sorry for the people who are dealing with it as I write this.
So it brings me back to grandma, the dog, the 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 take away, 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 the “wild” state, it is where they meet civilization that the problem begins. 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 set up in convenient locations? Maybe you live where there is no threat of wildfire, that’s a good place to be.