If you're careful and lucky, you may never have a house fire, the kind that gives you virtually no time at all.

But you can't control wildfires. You can stand in front of it yelling, or you can run.

The fire in the news here on the west coast is the Tahoe fire.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/26/wildfires/index.html?eref=rss_topstories. So far, over 2400 acres and 240 homes burned, 1000 more threatened.

Two pieces of information in the article jumped out at me:

"...many of the homes were lost in the first half hour."

"Many evacuating residents had to flee on foot, taking just what they could carry..."

It would be nice to have a plan that everyone in your family knows, whether you live in town or countryside.

Sue

Sue,
A very good topic. I've discussed this a few times in the past, but it's always good to review. In my specific case, we live quite a ways from where the fires originate, but due to the wildlife open areas we aren't quite out of reach. Generally though I'll be watching a fire's progress for a couple days before it gets threatening to me. At that point I pack the truck with whatever I decide I need to take. I walk through the house and take a current set of photos on my digital camera, back up my computer files (laptop goes with me) -- documentation. Then I sit back and continue to watch. While the 2003 Cedar fire burned my truck was packed; it stayed packed for a week.

Do not wait until the fire department says "leave now", to start packing. When they say leave, get in your car and start driving -- have a full tank.

RAS

I will assum that you had all of the area clear around your house so the firefighters had a chance to save it?

Some spokesman from the Forestry Dept who was being interviewed on TV yesterday was saying that this was the fastest moving fire he had personally seen. I haven't heard anyone actually say it, but maybe the speed is why so many homes were destroyed early on, before firefighters could get in position to protect the homes?

You don't normally think of Lake Tahoe being a wilfire prone area, but it just goes to show the extent of the drought conditions in the West this year. Seems like wilfire season is basically year-round for the foreseeable future.

Uh yeah. The only thing I can't do much about is the neighbor's cedar shake roof. Start that house burning and keeping ours from doing likewise would be tough. We've got a stone coated steel roof that is very good at not burning; house exterior is stucco, again not easy to burn, but put a big fire next to it and all bets are off.

RAS:

Run a sprinkler line made of iron pipe on the peak line of your roof. Before leaving turn it on. It will keep your roof from burning and the water that runs down will keep your walls wet.

Depends on where you live and what kind of fire. We have a 40-acre horse ranch in SoCal. The big fires in 2003 swept right through our place. We have 3 water reservoirs - one 10,000, one 6,000 and one 2,000 gallon, all on hills so we can gravity feed. We also have a water truck with a 2,500 gallon tank, pumps on steroids and a firehose. That saved our bacon. But we're on a well. The fire burned the power lines, cutting off power to our well pump and booster pumps. When the reservoirs were empty, we had to run around with the tractor dumping dirt on the fire. We have an 8.5 KW welder generator that we could wire up to run the pumps, but the fire happened so fast we didn't have time. We got it running the 2nd day so we could water the horses.

The fire was generating its own wind - on the order of 70 mph gusts. It got hot enough to delaminate the steel walls in some of our barn stalls. And our place is always completely scraped clean of brush. Full grown adult trees were bursting into flames. Embers blew into the barn and caught the stall bedding on fire. A sprinkler on the roof would have been like peeing on the sun.

We have 80-90 horses on the ranch. We evacuated as many as we could, then turned the rest loose to run when they had to. In the end they were all OK, though 2 of them got smoke inhalation and one had some pretty serious burns on its hooves. 13 stalls of the 40-stall barn had to be rebuilt, and thank God for a good insurance company.

If it weren't for the horses, I'd say, "Pack your crap and get out." We were purely lucky. And stupid, looking back on it.

Kevin B.

Wow Kevin, sounds like you had quite an experience. What improvements, if any, have you made since 2003? That is, considering there's anything else you could possibly do.

That also is good advice in the event that you are downwind of a CBR incident. It will wash off the contamination as it lands on the roof!

I used this article to reinforce,to DW, why her crazy, paranoid hubby is putting BoB's together for everyone AND why I keep working to improve upon them.

Considering where Big Al and KevinB live, I'm in good shape. The fire would need to jump I-15 to get to me and that's a few days travel from where you guys live. Best of luck if it hits again.

As for the sprinkler on the roof, the roof slopes perpendicular to where it would protect the house from the neighbor. I'm not worried about the roof, under the eaves on the sides would be the problem.

There's really not a whole lot you can do in a situation like that. It really makes more sense to just get the heck out of Dodge, except for the horses. We're even more paranoid about brush clearance, now. We also have a cable made up to connect the welder/generator to the pumps. Fortunately, our neighbors also appear to be more paranoid about brush clearance, too.

Kevin B.

This is up near where we go and it's terrible Years ago there was another large fire up there that's just now getting less noticable

Looks like they're planning for this to be a bad year for wildfires out west.

I'm sitting in Wyoming looking at (and breathing the smoke from) a fire that started last Thurs, and they don't have a handle on it yet, only 20% containment...

We are hosts at a primitive campground in the Sitgreaves NF in AZ. Surrounded by dry woods for miles.... The local ranger has been busy issuing citations for unauthorized fires, including one where the guy started a camp fire then went fishing, leaving the fire unattended.

We keep the camper "ready to roll". Even with the risk, the place is wonderful. 115 degrees in the valley but we are high on the "rim" at 7500 feet. We sleep under blankets at night. It would be horrible to loose more of this area to fires. There are several small ones burning at the moment. Well under control, but......

Just a thought after reading RAS's post.

Never count on a freeway as a buffer between you and a moving fire. I've seen them jump the freeway twice, once in SoCal and just a few years ago up here in WA (you know, the 'wet' capital of America. All you need is enough wind from the right direction.

Sue

Ah, another campground host. Great life, ain't it???

obg: Ah, another campground host. Great life, ain't it???

Yep.. PM sent. Don't wanna hi-jack this thread.

Nomad

Good summarizing article on Tahoe Lake fire: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/07/01/MNGBUQP7QF1.DTL
Just by coincidence we've canceled our camping reservation on Fallen Leaf lake for that weekend...