Fire

[hunterjwizzard]

I decided to post my story here because, well, I don't really talk to many people.

I live in the small town of Camarillo in Ventura County, which made international news yesterday for the wind-driven fire that blasted through part of our suburbs, destroying 133 homes. Aside from being the location of the Hotel California, this is the most interesting thing to happen here.

I was there first hand and have spent the past 2 days evacuated. I am happy to say myself, my wife, and our cats are completely unscathed, they my senile elderly cat is a bit of an asshole. My home and much more importantly my collection of mostly terrible vintage computers is safe. I also got my magic cards out. Because I know hot to prioritize in an evacuation.


Now I would like to share a side of this story that isn't coming through very clearly on the news. Everyone watching from out of state is probably thinking "Ah! California is on fire again? That's their thing." And indeed it is, but in my small town it was never "our" thing. The town is surrounded on all 4 sides by agricultural fields. When we bought our house, my wife expressed some concerns about fires since we were very technically on the outskirts of town(actually my street is "outside" of town in the sense that the town curves around us. City borders are weird.). I showed her a map and I said "look, this hilly area here you're worried about? That's all expensive homes with good fire protection. The other side of the hill is agriculture. There's this one tiny little brush area here but its protected by these fields on the other side of it. We are completely safe."

Oh how I was so very, very wrong.

We have a wind event that happens here a couple times a year called the Santa Annas(named after General Santa Anna, because I guess people hated him too?). These winds can gust up to 50 miles per hour and drop the relative humidity down into the single digits. Wednesday morning these winds turned an ordinary brush fire into a flamethrower that followed the path of the wind. It followed the "impenetrable" ridge line where the winds were highest, jumping any firebreak and torching house after house. Over the last 36 hours I've watched a fire tear through an area I thought completely safe from fires.

As did pretty much everyone I've spoken to in town. We're all absolutely shocked.



Now I'm getting into the real reason I made this post. Whoever you are, wherever you live, you need a personal evacuation plan. I have extensive, actual written disaster plans for my and my parent's hosue, all of which assumed the worst disaster that could befall us was an earthquake(I guess California is known for a third thing). Those plans always assumed shelter-in-place. Yesterday, I had to evacuate. I was not prepared to evacuate.

So that's my cautionary tale. Do with it as you will.

 

[Mr.Amiga500]

Good point. I wasn't prepared for losing 20 feet of my front lawn or 3 weeks without power. Here's what I saw in front of my house one morning after a hurricane:


("that's odd.. the blood usually gets off at the second floor...")

For scale, that stump (which used to be my tree) is 10 feet tall. I have a choice to move my house now at huge expense or gamble that another hurricane won't hit and wash it away.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

Yowser! Thats a closer shave than I ever wanna get!

 

[Plasma]

Glad you are ok. The weather is nice in California but I would not want to live there. Only have to worry about the very occasional tornado here.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

I've lived within a few square blocks since I was two. Last major disaster was the northridge quake on '94. Its been fine since then till now.

 

[DeltaDon]

hunterjwizzard, Sorry to hear about all the lost houses in your town. I lived in Santa Clarita for 25 years and went through fires several times myself. Worse was having to pack everything up and hope that we you returned that there would be something to return to. Glad your whole family and pets still have a place too. Now back in snow country, but not anywhere near as bad here as at the city I grew up near - Buffalo.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Good point. I wasn't prepared for losing 20 feet of my front lawn or 3 weeks without power. Here's what I saw in front of my house one morning after a hurricane:

("that's odd.. the blood usually gets off at the second floor...")

For scale, that stump (which used to be my tree) is 10 feet tall. I have a choice to move my house now at huge expense or gamble that another hurricane won't hit and wash it away.

Not to sound insensitive, but if you buy a house next to the largest bodies of water on the planet, it should always be on the presumption that you know that you're never going to be safe. Actually, being on *any* waterfront is unsafe, even inland. Like the people around lake Peigneur in 1980, when the entire lake disappeared down a 1,228 foot bore hole into a salt mine and took anything inside the lake and surrounding the lake down the hole with it. It was a miracle nobody died, including the poor soul out on the lake in his small fishing boat that barely managed to escape to shore and watch said boat get sucked down the hole with everything else and the tree that it was attached to.

I'll never understand why "prime waterfront property" is a thing, or why people pay exorbitant amounts of money for it.

 

[RedskullDC]

Hi All,

Fire can be really quite terrifying (and I'm saying that as the Deputy Captain in the local fire brigade).

Always pays to be prepared for the worst, know your escape plans thoroughly, and to keep it updated in line with current regulations and also wind directions etc.

I live in Rural Northern New South Wales (AUS), and our area was hit by the 2019 fires pretty badly.

Our extensive sprinkler system, and 15,000gal fire-fighting tank saved the house and shed, but everything else was toast:

 

[Mr.Amiga500]

I'll never understand why "prime waterfront property" is a thing, or why people pay exorbitant amounts of money for it.

You don't? Here are a few reasons:

1. I have hundreds of square kilometres of open space in front of my house instead of being packed in a subdivision like a rodent.

2. I can sail, row, swim any time of the day or night without having to drive 3 hours to get to the beach or worry about parks closing.

3. I have a near infinite free supply of fresh and salt water. (and clams... but I don't eat clams)

4. If there was a huge unexpected forest fire, I could jump into the water within seconds and save myself.

The only downside is the occasional catastrophic hurricane.

 

[GiGaBiTe]

1. I have hundreds of square kilometres of open space in front of my house instead of being packed in a subdivision like a rodent.

There are plenty of other options besides being packed in a postage stamp subdivision.

3. I have a near infinite free supply of fresh and salt water. (and clams... but I don't eat clams)

Legally? No. Government has all sorts of rules and regulations about pumping any amount of water from a waterway. I've known people in similar situations that got fined thousands of dollars and threatened with jail time for doing such without required permits and paying taxes on the water they pump.

4. If there was a huge unexpected forest fire, I could jump into the water within seconds and save myself.

Maybe if you had a several hour supply of air. Forest fires burn so much oxygen that they kill things that otherwise would have escaped it. Being lower than the fire is a terrible idea, not only do you have low oxygen to worry about, but also the toxic byproducts of combustion that are heavier than air and generally toxic.

The only downside is the occasional catastrophic hurricane.

Bad weather in general. Being that close to the water line, a bad storm is enough to cause flooding. Earthquakes, rogue waves, erosion, etc.

 

[Plasma]

It's a bit pointless to argue about where someone else should live. Everyone has different priorities. You decide what's most important, with the understanding you may be rolling the dice on natural disasters.

 

[DeltaDon]

If I even found paradise on earth, I'd not be able to afford to live there. Ditto with finding a place that's completely free from fire, floods, meteorites, hurricanes, heat waves, earthquakes, locust, tornadoes, lava flows, dust bowls, frozen tundra, liquefaction, sink holes, volcanoes, tsunami, multi-foot deep snow storms, black icy roads, droughts, invasions, hateful neighbors, government stupidity, jungle creatures and/or flash floods.

 

[hunterjwizzard]

If I even found paradise on earth, I'd not be able to afford to live there. Ditto with finding a place that's completely free from fire, floods, meteorites, hurricanes, heat waves, earthquakes, locust, tornadoes, lava flows, dust bowls, frozen tundra, liquefaction, sink holes, volcanoes, tsunami, multi-foot deep snow storms, black icy roads, droughts, invasions, hateful neighbors, government stupidity, jungle creatures and/or flash floods.

Don't forget the Chupacabra.

 

[cjs]

Not to sound insensitive, but if you buy a house next to the largest bodies of water on the planet, it should always be on the presumption that you know that you're never going to be safe. Actually, being on *any* waterfront is unsafe, even inland.

Reading this literally, you are dividing the world into binary "safe" and "unsafe" categories. But when you do that, there's no place that is "safe"; you cannot find a single geological feature where I can't find a disaster that involved that feature.

I'll never understand why "prime waterfront property" is a thing, or why people pay exorbitant amounts of money for it.

Because normal people do risk analysis (even if often poorly) to decide whether the benefits of something are worth the risks. You might consider someone else's choices to be "bad," but you're doing the analysis (badly again) based on your priorities, not theirs.

One might consider it insane that people willingly participate, often for hours a day, in an activity involving barely-trained, low-skilled people operating heavy machinery that kills tens of thousands of people per year in the U.S. alone, not to mention seriously injuring hundreds of thousands and causing massive property damage, yet people still drive cars and somehow think this is a good thing to do.

There are plenty of other options besides being packed in a postage stamp subdivision.

Yes. Much better to be much more highly packed into a downtown urban area where everything you need is nearby so you can get to a huge variety of services quickly and cheaply (including parks much larger and nicer than any back yard), and cars drive slowly on the streets making it much safer. I have no idea why someone would live in a suburb.

(Well, of course I know why: other people have preferences different to mine.)

 

[GiGaBiTe]

Reading this literally, you are dividing the world into binary "safe" and "unsafe" categories. But when you do that, there's no place that is "safe"; you cannot find a single geological feature where I can't find a disaster that involved that feature.

No, that would be you attacking a straw man. You made that distinction on your own.

Because normal people do risk analysis (even if often poorly) to decide whether the benefits of something are worth the risks. You might consider someone else's choices to be "bad," but you're doing the analysis (badly again) based on your priorities, not theirs.

My analysis is based on insurance analysis and global events. If insurance companies globally and scientific data say that living near an ocean is a poor decision and terrible idea, it's because it is, not because what I think. My priority is to not have higher insurance rates and taxes to cover other people's poor decisions, which is why I tell people to NOT live near large bodies of water or rivers.

One might consider it insane that people willingly participate, often for hours a day, in an activity involving barely-trained, low-skilled people operating heavy machinery that kills tens of thousands of people per year in the U.S. alone, not to mention seriously injuring hundreds of thousands and causing massive property damage, yet people still drive cars and somehow think this is a good thing to do.

The average car accident is 5k-60k. The average class hurricane is 1 BILLION at minimum. All of the car accidents in the country in a year doesn't even scratch what a single hurricane can do. Milton back in October is estimated to be near 50 billion. The lions share of that is from either being too close to the ocean, or flooding from being too close to a river.

The difference is, I willingly participate in playing bumper cars with idiots on the road. I don't willingly participate with large insurance increases caused by people in other states being wiped out due to their poor decisions.

Yes. Much better to be much more highly packed into a downtown urban area where everything you need is nearby so you can get to a huge variety of services quickly and cheaply (including parks much larger and nicer than any back yard), and cars drive slowly on the streets making it much safer. I have no idea why someone would live in a suburb.

(Well, of course I know why: other people have preferences different to mine.)

That's you attacking a straw man again. When did you decide the only two places that exist for living are beside an ocean and in a major city?

I don't even live in your country and I know Japan has a terrible problem of TOO MANY empty houses, EVERYWHERE there's MILLIONS of them. And they're damn cheap. So cheap that foreigners are buying them up for pennies on the dollar to renovate and live in them because the cost of the house, land, taxes and renovations is still orders of magnitude cheaper than wherever they live.

 

[cjs]

No, that would be you attacking a straw man. You made that distinction on your own.

I read what you wrote, which was, "...you're never going to be safe. Actually, being on *any* waterfront is unsafe..." followed by some anecdotes. Perhaps you had a rather more nuanced idea in your head of what you wanted to say, but you didn't say that.

If insurance companies globally and scientific data say that living near an ocean is a poor decision and terrible idea....

They don't say that. That's a value judgement. The insurance companies simply say, "we charge more if you're going to live in area X than area Y." The scientific data simply say that "the probability of bad thing Z happening is higher in area X than in area Y," without (at least in what you've provided) saying anything about other bad things that can happen in area Y, much less making value judgements about the benefits versus risks one suffers in areas X and Y.

My priority is to not have higher insurance rates and taxes to cover other people's poor decisions, which is why I tell people to NOT live near large bodies of water or rivers.

I think you telling people that is going to be astoundingly ineffective at achieving the goal you state. Perhaps, if your complaint is that your government is subsidising the risks of living in certain areas (which I agree the U.S. government is), you should instead work on getting that changed so that the costs of living in such areas are pushed more on to those who live there, and less on to you.

The difference is, I willingly participate in playing bumper cars with idiots on the road. I don't willingly participate with large insurance increases caused by people in other states being wiped out due to their poor decisions.

Welcome to living in large societies. I don't willingly participate in the massive subsidisation of people who drive personal automobiles, either. To take just one instance of that, my taxes go to pay for emergency services for those people "willingly participat[ing] in playing bumper cars with idiots on the road."

It's common for people to look at subsidies to others and complain about that, without them thinking about the subsidies from which they receive disproportionate benefit, and I think you are falling into that common trap.

That's you attacking a straw man again. When did you decide the only two places that exist for living are beside an ocean and in a major city?

I did not. Not only did I not suggest that there are only two places, but I introduced a third place, while in a somewhat sarcastic way pointing out that "being packed in a postage stamp subdivision," while looking cramped to you, looks far too spread out to others.

I don't even live in your country and I know Japan has a terrible problem of TOO MANY empty houses, EVERYWHERE...

Surely you understand that the problem is that they are not "everywhere"; they are in undesirable locations. You might as well tell someone in San Francisco that there's no housing issues there because the U.S. has plenty of land, and point to Nebraska.

Note that I'm not saying here that your choices of where to live, what activities to engage in, and what you would like to see subsidised (or not) are bad. Just that you should consider that other people have different preferences. The world does not revolve around you.

 

[Unknown_K]

Shit happens. If you don't have natural disasters, you have manmade ones (arson, robbery, high idiots driving cars into houses or just shitty neighbors).

Japan's problem is they have 0 immigration and a population that is aging into terminal decline so those millions of empty houses could have been desirable at one point but with such an abundance people can be picky. From what I read houses in Japan (are prefabricated) become valueless after 30 years and tend to be torn down and new ones built.

 

[computerdude92]

Come to Alaska. All I have to worry about is harsh winters and earthquakes.

 

[Mr.Amiga500]

Don't forget the Chupacabra.

Who could forget him?

If I even found paradise on earth, I'd not be able to afford to live there. Ditto with finding a place that's completely free from fire, floods, meteorites, hurricanes, heat waves, earthquakes, locust, tornadoes, lava flows, dust bowls, frozen tundra, liquefaction, sink holes, volcanoes, tsunami, multi-foot deep snow storms, black icy roads, droughts, invasions, hateful neighbors, government stupidity, jungle creatures and/or flash floods.

Yes. Out of all of those, I fear hateful neighbours and government stupidity the most.

For years I've wondered what the best emergency survival plan was. I wanted a reinforced underground bunker, but that's only a temporary solution because you'd eventually run out of air supply & power. What happens if it gets covered in tons of debris and you can't get out? What happens if a super tsunami or mega-flood covers you with hundreds of metres of water?

I've considered just buying a huge boring machine and tunneling down deep enough to enter the secret military underground bases or elite mega-bunkers (what do they know that they're not telling us?) and leach off them. They'd probably capture me, torture and kill me. It's not like I could call police and say, "I'm 2km under Granite Mountain and a security team is trying to kill me. Please hurry!"

I guess the only thing to do is prepare supplies for minor disasters - but in big disasters you're basically screwed.

 

[Zare]

Sad to hear that Hunter, I hope everything will turn out well.

I live in a dense urban area that has 20-40 thousand people per square km depending on exact location. The buildings should survive the earthquakes, low tornadeos, hurricane level winds or anything else that can hit this area. Fires cannot propagate that easily even if everything is covered in Mediterannean Pine which acts as napalm in fires - the cones ignite and can propel themselves for tens of meters. Every building has XY fire zones, and fire does not spread through reinforced concrete.

There are no personal evacuation plans. If you try to do something by yourself you might screw up everyone else.

I 100% agree here with @cjs - after we had a disaster in mid 20th century we brought in Japanese to construct the new build code and urbanity rules.

The earthquake that struck Zagreb couple of years ago did some damage and there were some casualties - especially in the towns in the region - 99% of the damage was on private property built outside the code (brick and mortar opposed to reinforced concrete), and buildings from 19th and early 20th century that weren't maintained properly. My brother was awoken by earth trembling on the 15th floor of the commieblock - apart from the horrific moments, there was no damage.

I get that people from America are going to have a completely different perspective as they tend to live alone, on estates, without any systemic effort to mitigate these. Even worse, in the same natural system there might be another human development actually worsening the situation.
The biggest uncontrollable fire in my city was due to that kind of living style - people on estates in private homes in low-urbanization edge area of the city, that didn't clear their lawns and lands and back-house forests, so fire just fueled through in a second.

In my personal case, the first thing I'm doing is getting the hell out of here in the direction of my parents' home, who'll do the same so we'll probably meet in the streets between.
Depending on how much I have, I'll pick some stuff with me. Backup HDD, one of my guitars, M19's case if it isn't stored, and that's it, I'm getting the hell out to the first near big open surface which is a stadium estate right across the street. When I come there should be already hundreds to thousands of people in the same place. We also have a park forest nearby, and are in cove, with a lot of islands nearby.

There are options. None of them has anything to to with my "personal evacuation plan".