E-Mail 'Our Wildfire Evacuation, Part 2, by SoCal9mm' To A Friend

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1. After our first summer touring in an RV, our family decided to stock it separately than our household supplies. Did you have clothes, other bug out items staged in yours?

   1. Hi Kim – at that time, no, we just had our “extra clothing box” set aside to grab & go. Shortly after, we added a set of clothes to the trailer. As part of my recent spring cleaning I pulled a bunch of older (but still serviceable) clothes out to donate, but instead decided to add them to the trailer to boost our clothing levels.

2. I can only imagine the stress you had in order to make the evac decision before any local announcement. Just goes to show us that the government doesn’t have your family’s best interest in mind. When in doubt- get out.

3. socal..

   have you updated your comms-plan to include vehicle mount or handheld CB radio or Ham Handhelds between you and W vehicles? or backpacks?

   1. Hi SOG – the first sentence tomorrow addresses my comms problem. To answer your question, we could have (& should have) just used our handhelds in this emergency, and that’s now our comms plan for future events.

4. Thanks for the comments y’all. It’s funny, some of these comments will get addressed in the first few sentences of tomorrow’s post.

5. I live in the woods where 2 summers ago we had a bad fire. I have several new in the box emgerency shelters, the old USFS ‘shake and bake’ mylar tents. Are these useful, or are they merely a false sense of security. I’ve heard that these might only be good enough if used in the middle of a pasture, or clearing with only grass to burn.

6. Tunnel Rabbit,

   As a Level 1 Wildland Firefighter, I can tell you that the emergency shelters are largely a false sense of security: don’t count on them to save your life.

   I recommend you watch “Only The Brave”, a 2017 movie about a tragic wildfire incident. You will see that the shelters saved no one, unfortunately.

   1. Yes, unfortunately they have Jiffy Pop Bag as their nickname, for good reason.

      1. RFLMAO!

         TB

7. You can find a shell of a camper trailer pretty easily. I saw 27 foot one on a used car lot, in non habitable but running gear all good and in waterproof condition.

   600 bucks and it was mine.

   I decided in an evac-required/survival situation that it would do me good to have some brand new clothing items for reviving the body and spirit.

   I bought 30 bucks of new clothing and keep some new stockings, underwear, and one pair of jeans loaded in a bundle, along with two decent shirts and a half decent coat.

   Since we live in a hypothermia zone I added in good but used long underwear. And a set of decent army boots. All in our travel trailer with other preps.

   Cargo trailers are a much better evacuation trailer, if you can get one.

   If you raid our place for your preps, our black and yellow tubs are neatly labeled and stacked for you: water, ramen, winter, food by expiration date, cooking and fuel, medical, trauma, comms. This doesn’t include papers or mementos but will enable survival along with the defensive items kept separately. 15 minutes will do it.

   If you are loading our stuff up, please throw a tarp over us, unless it is us doing it for you in our front yard.

   God Bless

8. SoCal9mm
   You might want to invest in a police scanner and leave it on during fire season. You would have heard all of the fire traffic on the radio at 645 when it started

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