Is there a plan to get Houstonians organised with axes to clear out the dead standing wood and keep it for winter fuel? This would not only reduce the wild fire risk this year but also in the future. It also would give every Houstonian family enough winter fuel for the next decade.

Tragic. We're praying you'll get rain!

I was listening to the news about the fire, and thinking of you, Blast, hoping it wasn't in your area.

I hope the usual if-I'm-ready-it-won't-happen rule applies to you.

Good luck, fingers, toes and eyes crossed for you and your family.

Sue

Unfortunately real fireplaces are pretty rare in Houston. Everyone (including us) has decorative natural gas-burning fireplaces with artificial logs.

The city has lost more trees to the drought than to hurricane Ike. Keep in mind the millions of trees I mentioned are just those INSIDE Houston city limits. Statewide the number of dead trees are orders of magnitude larger.:( Texas could possibly lose over 20% of all its trees before this is over.

-Blast

Remember, if you know without doubt it's time to leave, the fire is too close.

It's been really ugly this year. The last measurable rain I've had was in early March - a whole 1/2". Nothing measurable since then.

I'm ~10 or 12 miles from the big fire in Bastrop. When the fire is 7 miles wide and 16 miles long my distance is not any comfort. Yesterday (30 and 40 mile winds towards the south) was scary looking. It looked like a HUGE storm to our east. I have friends that are much closer. They are only a few miles away, but the ash blew and swirled through their place like snow all day yesterday. They had their trucks loaded and were ready to take off at a moments notice. I'm born and grew up here, but I'm not real fond of Texas right now.

We'll keep you in our prayers Blast. We've had a pretty bad go of it on this side of the Red River too but our fires never got anywhere near as bad as those in Texas. Luckily we've recently had some decent rains up in the northeastern corner of the state which have taken the edge off the worst of the drought for some of us.

That non-stop heat this summer was something else; anything that sat exposed to the elements looks to have aged years in one season.

Texans... best of luck...I was stationed in San Angelo for tech school in the 70's...treated very well by the locals...I wish I could trade you the rain we're having

Unfortunately, we have wildfires here in Florida all the time and they seem the scariest of natural disasters because of their intensity and unpredictable nature. I few years ago, the inventor of Barricade Fire Blocking Gel came to one of our CERT meetings and put on an incredible demonstration of his product which is a sticky gel that you apply to the house with a garden hose before evacuating. I was amazed at how well it protected a simple piece of plywood from a propane torch. A lot of us now keep a container in the garage just in case. The inventor, a retired fireman, generally travels to areas like this in an attempt to help save homes, so I'll bet he is in Texas now. I am not associated with the inventor, but was absolutely amazed at this product.

The fire retardent gels/foams are impressive products. Of course, it would be folly for any homeowner to think that they're protected just because they have a few cans of this stuff in their garage. As with most disasters, it's best to have multiple responses/preps.

I'm reminded of a couple recent wildfires here in Southern California. One of them started near a large housing development mid-morning on a weekday, so many of those homes were empty and totally unprepared for the fire because there was no fire at all when people headed off to work. There was a massive traffic jam of people trying to get back to their homes to grab stuff and pets, but vehicular traffic was prevented from re-entering because the flames were already so close to the homes.

There was a wildfire situation near Yorba Linda where very low water pressure was an issue. I think a pumping station was overrun by fire and so a whole neighborhood uphill from there was basically without water. Anyway, so anyone depending on using their garden hose to apply a product like this could be so out of luck.

One thing I'm not sure if a product like addresses are bigger openings, like an attic vent, where wind-driven embers could enter and how many homes in SoCal caught on fire. I doubt it's viscose enough to bridge a fairly wide gap like that. Well, a prepared homeowner would've already put fine mesh screens over bigger openings like that to catch embers before they entered the home.