Emergency Preparedness: building community resiliance for the future

[iris lily]

Thanks to ANM's nice framing of a topic (which I completely stole from her, thnkas ANM!) here's a thread to talk about disaster and emergency preparation in your community and for you community. If there is enough participation we may open a forum dedicated to Emergency Preparedness as a function of simplicity.

To start off the discussion, I am personally interested in this question: have you ever been in a community that was evacuated by officials? How did that go? What did you take with you? Were you reluctant to go, or did you, in fact, stay when officials told you to go?

[bae]

Just a few months ago, I was in a community that was declared in a state-of-emergency. I'll write it all up in a bit I suppose. I was in the thick of things, as a first responder and as an elected official in one of the jurisdictions.

That said, I would only personally evacuate if *I* thought it was a good idea, and have evacuation plans, methods, and destinations in place.

I evacuated my own family last year briefly for a wildfire on the mountain we live on, but they only went about 6 miles away while I was working on the fire, which we stopped 4 lots away from my home.

If I *did* evacuate, I'd take family, pets if possible, and box-of-useful-stuff if possible. Nothing here except family and pets is irreplaceable though, and all the "stuff" is insured, so we could be out of here in 5 minutes. I keep the truck pointed out of the driveway, with some gear in it, we can have family and pets out the door in mere moments, which is important in an area of extreme wildfire danger.

[bae]

I will highly recommend this book:

http://u.s.kqed.net/2012/10/02/aparadisebuiltinhell.jpg

[Spartana]

Having previously lived in a high wildfire area of the mountains, during the fire season I would pretty much have things ready as Bae does. Important papers/photos in a small fire proof briefcase ready to go and it would just be grab the critters, the briefcase and some other personal stuff and whatever I could put in my truck within a moment notice. The problem was more if I was away off the mountain (down the hill as we'd say) and a fire broke out there would be no way to go back up at all except to hike in from 50 miles or more away thru the back country (which was generally on fire). So I always had the constant worry about leaving my pets alone when I was gone. I relied on a neighbor but, that town being a resort place with many second homes, they may only be there on weekends. I eventually just started to bring the pets with me once I only had 2 dogs. Less worrisome that way. I also made a small fire fighting system of fire retardant mixed in a pump with water to create a foam (Bae knows what I'm talking about) that I could spray on my house with a fire hose attached (we used a similar foam system to fight fires when I was in the coast guard). The problem was that the water supply was iffy and would run out quick. But would probably help in a small wind driven wildfire to douse burning embers from my roof. Never had to use it. And yes, if it was a wildfire I would generally evacuate. Only 2 roads in and out - both passing thru miles of National Forest - and if you got stuck up there, you got stuck. However I wouldn't go to a shelter but try to find refuge elsewhere. However if it was an earthquake (my current number one disaster worry) I'd stay with my house even if it were uninhabitable. Could camp in the backyard until my supplies ran out.

[bae]

Spartana had it dialed in for that situation. (The foam stuff rocks, as does Firewise: http://www.firewise.org/?sso=0 )

[Spartana]

Spartana had it dialed in for that situation. (The foam stuff rocks, as does Firewise: http://www.firewise.org/?sso=0 )Yeah foam is great but it tends to dry out too fast in a big wildfire (although way better then water alone!). I always wonder what kind of retardant the fire dropping planes used as that seems to work great. We generally used foam to gently coat fuel and oil and equipment in shipboard, dock and oil well fires and it worked great for that since water in a high pressure fire hose wouldn't work. Nothing like spraying gallons of burning fuel or oil all over the place with a big high pressure fire hose :-)!

[bae]

Seriously though, your best bet is reducing the fuel load around your home, like the Firewise people recommend.

[Spartana]

Seriously though, your best bet is reducing the fuel load around your home, like the Firewise people recommend.Agreed. In Calif it's required by law to remove all vegetation (flammable stuff like trees and under brush) 100 feet from your entire house. The Fire Authority actually comes out and inspects peoples houses and issues them an order to clear their vegetation. Works great too but in the mountains with all those big pine trees, it's hard to avoid spreading the embers long distances. Fireproof roofing does work miracles in situations like that though. I've seen that "one house standing" in a totally burned out 'hood after a wildfire came thru all because they had a fireproof roof.

[RosieTR]

Wow, it boggles my mind that more people around here don't take fire mitigation that seriously. CO has no law that I'm aware of that *requires* removing vegetation within 100ft of a home, though more and more insurance companies are certainly taking note and doing inspections in the WUI. And still, more and more people moving up into the canyons, sigh.
As for me personally, no I have not been evacuated. Parts of my city (and parts of all surrounding cities) were evacuated during the floods in Sept. A couple of people from work had to evacuate. Some of those it was a matter of access, some a matter of their home getting full of backed-up-sewer. The one whose house was OK but cut off did a crazy/awful drive down a disintegrating road in near-dark that could have easily turned out very badly, and afterward she recognized that was likely a foolish decision made in panic. I don't think she could have anticipated and evacuated beforehand, because by the time it was clear to authorities that it was flooding, the road was already washing away. I think other people in her area were helicoptered out a few days after her trek, once they were able to fly. I believe she spent something like 2 weeks living on a friend's couch but once there was a passable road she went up and her place was more or less OK aside from food that had spoiled from the power being out. She hadn't been completely out of supplies, but all the services were off so she wasn't sure what was going on. From her perspective, she had no power, internet, or phone service and it was raining endlessly and nobody had been able to notify their neighborhood of what was going on. Apparently either nobody had a battery or hand-crank radio or they did but didn't really know the extent of what was going on. The radio was repeatedly playing the emergency tone and trying to give updates, but without actually seeing it on TV like I was, it might have been difficult to really get a sense that no kidding, this was crazy. The creek that washed out her road was also normally a tiny thing, and when the bigger creeks and rivers were cutting off whole towns and submerging the interstate highways it's possible the radio just didn't get that far down the list so she didn't hear anything. Anyway, I'm glad she lived through the drive.

Both DH and I know people who were evacuated in 2012 from wildfires. As for how they handled it, the authorities worked with various agencies and it went as well as it could at a traumatic time. One person I know was evacuated for nearly a month. There was a little looting in both the fires and floods but the authorities were pretty on top of things and I heard that problems were as much from bears as criminals, but both were at a low level. Overall, I certainly heard plenty of good stories of neighbors helping neighbors, random people helping business owners save or clean and restore their business, and government and NGOs working together to all do a good job in both crises. One of the biggest changes I noticed after watching the Katrina debacle on TV is that now the Red Cross and other NGOs work together with animal shelters and local livestock holding areas to anticipate sheltering pets and livestock. The local Humane Society completely stopped doing adoptions during the High Park fire, because they concentrated all their efforts on housing evacuee's pets. There are similar stories for the flood, though some sad situations in which animals drown because owners were away and couldn't physically reach the home. I think this very much helps people comply with evacuation orders. Who wants to leave their furry friends to burn, drown or choke to death on smoke? Especially in a situation that's already incredibly emotionally traumatic.

After all this, I think the lesson is to know what types of issues your area could face and don't ignore human-caused ones either. We don't live in the WUI or floodplain so my worry about fires are the regular house fire types, and floods are the drain-backing-up type. However, we live about 2 miles from train tracks, and the trains often carry nasty chemicals. It's not inconceivable that one could derail for whatever reason and require us to leave. It's unlikely we'd have a huge, area-wide evac but some places prone to tsunamis, earthquakes or especially hurricanes can't count on shelter for many surrounding square miles. That's got to be taken into account as well by communities.
The other retrospective lesson I found was to anticipate problems before authorities announce it. They are, by and large, honestly trying to do their jobs but some jobs get overwhelming. Local police worked 30 hour shifts during the floods and you can't think straight for that long. Sometimes they are doing their best just to deal with the situation rather than inform the the public, or weighing whether it will be helpful or incite panic. I was not the only one in town who filled containers of potable water, despite not having direction from authorities to do so. Turned out we escaped very narrowly losing all potable water for the city, and unbeknownst to most, the water authorities were having a little panic attack. So being a little more prepared than the official word is not a bad thing.

[Spartana]

I'm also surprised more people in wildfire areas don't take it more serious as the impact of taking even minimal precautions can save your house. Some of the stuff we have to do in wildfire areas are mandatory - like removing vegetation from within 100 ft of your property - but many other things can be done voluntarily. We do have to pay an extra tax each year to the Fire Authority for potential firefighting. The amount you pay is based on the size of our property and number of buildings on it. So the bigger your lot, and the larger or more numerous your buildings, the more you pay. I no longer live in a wild fire zone so don't have to pay it but it was about $300/year for a 1/2 acre property with one small dwelling on it. That is not fire insurance (that's a separate thing - and you can not get wildfire insurance here) but just a tax that goes towards fire fighting. I'm not sure what the fine is if you don't remove vegetation from 100 ft of your property but they do fine you. It's going to be a terrible fire season here in Calif this year as we are in severe drought and it's very very dry everywhere. We probably won't get any more rain this year either.

[Gardenarian]

I live in a grass fire zone and everyone in town is sent a notice in the spring to take precautions, cut back brush, etc.
We can't go to 100' because our lots aren't that large, but we do what we can.

[bae]

The thing many people do not realize about fires in the wildland/urban interface area is that the *homes* in the area are a major source of ignition to neighboring homes. It's not necessarily the trees, it is your neighbor's poorly-prepared home that may offer you the greatest threat.

Here's a photo from the Waldo Canyon fire to illustrate my point: Note that the homes are burned, but the trees near the home are fine. Those homes went up from embers landing on them, they probably had pine needles or other fuel in gutters or under/on decks, then those homes themselves shot up a lot of embers that took out neighboring homes.

Properly clearing a defensible space around your home not only protects your home, it protects your neighbors'.

http://radiocoloradocollege.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/WUI-CO_12-07-02_0424-510x382.jpg

[larknm]

How can I find out about the foam?

[Spartana]

How can I find out about the foam?

You can buy them online. Just google foam firefighting systems for homeowners - or something like that - and you should come up with a whole bunch of different products. Here's one: http://www.homefirefightingsystems.com/foamequipment.html