from Survival Blog:
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.
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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.
These are our family’s evacuation and displacement experiences before, during, and after the Thomas Fire. My hope is that they can spark others (no pun intended) to think about what to do in an emergency where you are forced to flee from your home.
Pre-Evacuation
A few months before the Thomas fire, shortly before the Tubbs Fire, I looked at our family’s old evacuation plan and knew it needed to be updated. The old plan was based upon a generic form that I’d gotten from our county officials at one of the local emergency preparedness fairs. It was better than nothing and I’d modified it so that it sort of fit us, but I wanted something that was specific and tailored to our needs. I decided that I wanted a “time-critical” checklist that would be more concise and easier to use during an “event” – a “pre-plan” of what was critical, what was vital, what was important, what was ‘really-nice-to-have’, and what were ‘leftovers’. Items and tasks were prioritized into 1-minute, 5-minute, 15-minute, etc. checklists of things to do or items to grab. After much thought and planning, many revisions, and a lot of time reorganizing our stuff, I ended up with something similar to the following…
1-Minute (e.g., house is on fire, severe earthquake, etc.) = critical items and things we need to survive:
So that’s 5 or 6 items / tasks in 1 minute – that would be under ideal conditions. In reality, it’s probably more like 1.5 to 2 minutes coming out of a deep sleep and working in the dark. The wallet, cell phone, and extra meds are not truly critical but they were of immense benefit during our evacuation – and they are kept near to my bed so they take very little time for me to grab; but, I would skip them if I had to hunt for them or if I had to get out RFN. In reality, the ONLY items that are truly critical are my family members – I would not leave without them, and I would go back in to get them.
5-Minute (e.g., fire on the horizon heading your way, etc.) = vital items and non-replaceable items:
Many of these items are kept in the same general location, so they are able to be grabbed quickly.
15-Minute (e.g., fire in the area and closing in) = important items and difficult to replace items:
30-Minute = highly valuable items:
60-Minute = other items / tasks:
>1-Hour (e.g., hurricane or rising flood waters coming soon)… Assuming we won’t be returning home any time soon. We’ve probably gathered as much as we can reasonably carry, most of these are tasks to make our (hopeful) homecoming as pleasant as possible:
When loading, we have to consider our vehicle’s limitations. We have a full-sized truck and a travel trailer that each have ~1,000 lbs. load capacity – based upon our calculations (and upon our experience during our evacuations), we have space and carrying capacity to haul pretty much all the stuff on our checklists. If you’ve only got a Mini Cooper or a motorcycle, your options are much more limited. We also have some guidelines noted on the checklist for loading:
Also, if escaping from an immediate threat (e.g., wildfire closing in), the priority is to get clear of the threat before doing things like:
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