SurvivalBlog.com

(Continued from Part 3.)

LESSONS LEARNED OR THINGS THAT WORKED OK:

1. Priorities – again, having a to-do list for the day really helped us, even one that we just made up on the fly.
   1. I really wanted to ensure there was no firearm left in the house, and I really wanted to get the flammable materials out of the shed. We took the diesel cans with us, and we left the propane tanks in front of the house at the street (per fire department recommendations).
   2. We really wanted to clear our fridge before everything spoiled, which would have ruined it.
   3. We also grabbed some sentimental items – unbeknownst to me, she grabbed my dad’s wedding ring. (“Dawwww”.)
2. Insurance
   1. If you’ve got something worth protecting, please make sure you have insurance for it. Know what is covered and what is not – in most standard homeowner policies, damage from fire is covered; earthquake and flood are not.
   2. Start talking to your insurance company immediately after an event. Even though we still had our house, we were “displaced” and could draw on certain benefits outlined in our policy.
   3. As mentioned before, save your receipts on everything you spend. You may be able to be reimbursed by your insurer – be sure to ask them, we found that they were not necessarily telling us everything unless we asked about something specifically.
3. Talk with friends / family.
   1. It really helped us to be the supportive ones to our friends who were hardest hit.
4. Extra clothes and toiletries – as mentioned before, you’ve probably got a suitcase in your closet waiting for your next vacation. Pack it with a few days’ worth of extra clothing along with your TSA-approved toiletries kit, and you’ve got your extra clothes in a ready-to-go set up.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT:

1. We didn’t photograph the food we tossed from the fridge/freezer – fortunately it didn’t come back to bite us.
2. We didn’t prop the fridge doors open after emptying to prevent mold / mildew – corrected on Sunday 12/10 (the next time we were able to go in).
3. We didn’t shut off electrical breakers in case of power surges or voltage irregularities when the system gets fixed – corrected on 12/10.
4. We didn’t “hard lock” the garage roll-up-door – corrected on 12/10.
5. We didn’t post our contact information on the front door when we left – corrected on 12/10.

Thursday 12/07/17 through Sunday 12/10/17

Thursday

Thursday was the first day that I actually felt somewhat “normal” – well, new normal anyway. We had been to our house the day before and we had all the extra items we were able to grab, we had been able to see the state of the neighborhood during our “visit”, and we got on the hillside and helped fight the fire (or at least reduce the chance of another flare-up). So, we felt better about things

Still no news from anyone as to when we could get back into our house.

We moved from our first friends’ house to another friend’s house today. They were wonderful hosts who put up with more than they should have – we interrupted their lives and their kids’ lives – with never a complaint from them, only offers of more help. We could not overstate how much we appreciated their help during this time.

Friday

The winds died down and the smoke moved in – air quality dropped from bad to unbelievable, visibility was down to a few hundred yards. We had a couple of old N95 dust masks, but the rubber strap broke on mine and the stores were all sold out. So we drove to my work and asked for a few from our safety supplies.

Please keep in mind – everything that I’ve described for past 3-4 days (evacuating in the dark, going the County government center, working around our house & putting out fires on the hillside, etc.) was all done while wearing an old N95 dust mask. It’s no wonder that it broke, it’s a wonder that it lasted as long as it did.

My boss told me that he could follow me through the office area by sniffing for my smoke-saturated shirt. (Yuck).

Saturday

The city council hosted a meeting with several spokespersons from the various agencies to address the public. We were really hoping for some detailed information about when we could return to our homes and what were the progression of steps needed to rebuild for those that lost theirs. But no one was willing to even give us an approximate timeframe – Days? Weeks? Months? Don’t know…

Instead, we got a history of when the fire started (yeah, we already knew that), and how it has moved (right over the top of us, duh), and the State and Federal Representatives for our area standing up telling us that they’re “working tirelessly for us”: One guy said of this comment, “Oh yeah? Where’s your shovel?” All in all, it was not too well received.

A friend heard an off-mike comment from a Cal-Fire official (the Incident Command agency) that they were concerned about the high number of houses that burned and that most were 40-50 years old – when asbestos, lead, cadmium, chromium, mercury, etc. were common in building materials. So now all this “residue” was in the ash that settled on everything and they were trying to determine the “level of safety” in the area – and it may be several weeks before we could get back into our houses.

Okay, well that sucks but at least it tells us something (c’mon, give us information people), and it makes some sense. If one or two older houses burn it’s no big deal, if 350 older houses burn then the ash and residue could be of concern. So, now we made up a new plan – we went out that evening, looking for (and finding) long-term lodging. Yay.

Sunday

The National Guard (NG) had taken over perimeter enforcement of the last few high-impact neighborhoods where residents were still not allowed entry.

We found out that residents would be allowed back in this weekend and we decided to go on Sunday 12/10. The rules were that verified residents could enter for a very short visit, escorted by NG and taken in via bus or van, and each of us was allowed to bring out 1 medium-sized bag of stuff as long as it could fit on our lap.

Everyone was very nice: National Guard, police, local Boy Scout troop handing out water while we waited, church volunteers who made lunches for many people, etc. I really can’t say enough good things about the people of our community, they stepped up and bonded together.

So, we got in and they told us we had ~45 minutes before they’d come back by to pick us up – be ready!

What did we do? We made a to-do list!

1. Grab some comfy clothes (e.g., PJs, shorts, flip-flops, etc.).
2. Grab W.’s Christmas presents hidden in my closet (that’s what I get for shopping early).
3. Prop open the fridges.
4. Water the hillside and outdoor plants.
5. Shut off electrical breakers.
6. Gas meter – it was on our list to shut the gas off, but the Gas Company had already come through the neighborhood and done it for everyone.
7. Add a “hard lock” to the garage (rollup) door – by this I just mean locking or blocking the track in which the door rollers travel (I used a hammer stuck though a hole in the track).
8. Grab pet dishes, treats, and a few toys.
9. Post our contact info on our front door (so police can notify us if they see anything out of place).

The house looked good, no signs of entry and no fire damage or vandalism. We grabbed our stuff and did our tasks in record time, so fast that we were sitting for ~15 minutes before the bus came back to get us.

LESSONS LEARNED OR THINGS THAT WORKED OK:

1. If you’re ever in this type of situation and you’re not getting any info, try talking to as many “people in charge” as you can – maybe they’ll let something slip, or see if you can piece together something based on what they are not telling you.
2. Shutting off the power at the breakers paid off. Our next door neighbor didn’t do this and his television  blew up when he first turned it on (he said it sounded like a shotgun going off and smoke came out the top) – he also lost at least 1 of his computers.
3. I have to say that my place of employment was very gracious with me (wife’s to her also). I called on Tuesday and they said not to worry about coming back until the following Monday. Having that time off was a huge help – getting back into the house, dealing with insurance, and even just trying to get back to somewhere near “normal” would not have been possible without the time to deal with this “stuff” – and we still had our house! I’m sure it was 10 times worse for those that lost theirs…
4. I also have to say that I really don’t know where I’d be without W. She says that I’m her rock, but she’s really the steady one in our duo. Most of the “pre-work” in our response to this event was done by me; yes, I’m the worry-wort who spent hours planning and making evacuation checklists, pre-staging all those items and boxes and kits, etc. But she’s the one who took the lead on getting our world put back together afterwards – insurance, utilities, clean-up, etc.

(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 5.)

(Continued from Part 2.)

OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT: 

1. Radios – both Motorola radios AND handheld ham radios were left behind that would have helped us stay in contact between our 2 cars. Cell phones worked (thankfully), but I noticed bad connections nearly every call.
   1. NOTE: if we had a better means of communication, W. could have taken her car to the other neighborhood exit to see if traffic was flowing better and reported back to me to either follow her or stay where I was (oh well, hindsight and all that).
2. Scanners, or even scanner apps – having access to information from the FD might have given us information a bit sooner.
3. Extra clothes – it sucks to have only 1 pair of pants to wear continuously for several days when they’re full of smoke and you’re sleeping in them (yuck).
4. We needed backup pet items (food bowls, water bowl, litter box, and litter) all in 1 bag and added to the checklist (a pet-BOB, if you will).
5. We have monthly poker nights and our small “bank” doubles as part of our emergency cash “stash”. It got left behind the first night (grabbed later) – needed to be added to checklist.
6. Power cords – we had micro-USB cords for the cell phones, but my laptop power cord was missed.

Tuesday, 12/05/17

~6:00am

The night finally ended but the winds were still howling, and we couldn’t find any good information on where the fire was or where it might be heading. We went to the County Gov’t Center to try to find some answers (W knows some people there).Continue reading“Our Wildfire Evacuation, Part 3, by SoCal9mm”

(Continued from Part 1.)

So we put this plan together on paper, that’s all that we needed to do, right? Um, no. Practicing an evacuation drill is probably at least as important as having an evacuation plan. After I had revised our plan into the checklist format, I knew that we needed to practice it to see if the timeframes were correct (i.e., could we actually do all the stuff that I’d written down on the 1-minute checklist in 1 minute?). Shortly after the Tubbs Fire (in October, 2017) we did a walk-through of the house and pointed out all the items on the checklist and where they were located. We planned to do a dry run on November 5th – but something came up and we had to postpone it… We never did get the chance to do that dry run before we had to “do it live.”

Of course it goes without saying that this is my checklist – it (mostly) works for me and my family, and it’s always undergoing tweaks and revisions as new items get added, as things get moved around for better storage, or if my wife (henceforth, “W.” in this article) has a better idea than one of mine. Should you decide that a checklist could work for you, yours will likely be different (and may be very different) from mine. That’s great – customizing any plan to fit your family’s needs is exactly what is should happen; just like my dissatisfaction with the “generic emergency-fair” list is what prompted me to make one that was a better fit for us.

So that’s the story of how our checklists were supposed to work out. How did we do during the actual evacuation?Continue reading“Our Wildfire Evacuation, Part 2, by SoCal9mm”

Editor’s Introductory Note:  At nearly 10,000 words, this is one of the longest multi-part articles ever to appear in SurvivalBlog. It will be presented in five parts, concluding on Saturday. Despite its length, this is some fascinating and detailed reading. The author’s insights and “lessons learned” are quite valuable, and they go far beyond just the particular concerns of wildfire evacuation.

—

On the evening of December 4, 2017, the Thomas Fire started in Ventura County, California. By the time it was over, about 440 square miles had burned across Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, more than 1,000 structures were lost, and at least 23 people had perished (2 directly from the fire, and another 21 [plus 2 missing] from subsequent mudslides caused by denuded hills). This fire resulted from the combination of a long-term drought (very dry brush) and a very strong Santa Ana wind condition (a semi-routine wind pattern that blows from the deserts of Utah, Nevada, and Arizona and pushes warm and very dry air into SoCal). Temperatures, even on this December evening, were in the 60s – 70s, humidity was in the single digits, and winds were blowing up to 70 mph. A spark was all that was needed to set off this firestorm, and that was provided by a downed power line.

The Thomas Fire came right on the heels of the devastating Tubbs Fire in and around Santa Rosa, California, which burned so quickly that entire neighborhoods were engulfed before people could escape. One heartbreaking news story told of a trapped couple who had to shelter all night in a swimming pool, just briefly exposing their mouths and noses to get air before going back down to escape the heat / flames. The husband survived, but the wife did not. The only thing to come out of the Tubbs Fire that could be called “good” was that such terrible stories from Santa Rosa were fresh in the minds of many of us in Ventura County – and we knew that we had to get out NOW when the evacuation was called for. I firmly believe that without the “lesson” that the Tubbs Fire taught many Californians, the death toll from the Thomas Fire would have been higher.

On the first night of the Thomas Fire, somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 people were forced to evacuate from our homes. Over the course of the next 3-to-4 weeks, as the fire spread across Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, the number of people displaced rose to over 100,000. We were out of our home for a little more than four weeks.Continue reading“Our Wildfire Evacuation, Part 1, by SoCal9mm”