Many of the suburbs and cities hit hardest in recent years were caught off-guard, and key stakeholders are racing to understand the dynamics that drive these fires
I know I’m not safe, from Last year when a nearby house caught fire. It lit up in a windstorm which partially destroyed that house, completely destroyed the house next door, and lit multiple fires in the area, my trees included. Me and several other people spent the next 6 hours running around putting out little flare ups in the neighborhood while the firefighters tackled the two houses. My daughter lives on the other side of town and she said all she could see outside was embers carried by the wind everywhere.
Really pushed home how easily things can go south in a heartbeat. The saving grace that there wasn’t much MUCH more damage was the fact it had been drizzling all day so everything was wet and harder than usual to ignite. If it wasn’t for the rain I know my house would be gone, and quite a few others around here too.
That was a close call for sure.
After reading your post I thought of sharing something that could be helpful. I understand that most probably you already know this stuff, but I see no harm in sharing this input.
Wildfires - Habitat Ready: Disaster preparedness for homeowners
Just to note that I found this article in this Disaster Response community.
One thing I’ve learned from the experience is to pick up a water pump and keep it handy for the future. When the houses were burning and my trees caught on fire I couldn’t do much at all to stop anything because there was no water pressure… I guess because the fire dept was using it all supplying all the trucks.
We could deal with the stuff on the ground, but couldn’t get enough pressure to shoot up into the trees so they had to divert a pumper truck to help. Once they got the upper parts managed we could take down the rest. A good pump would have helped a lot.