The fire started in mid June when there were plenty of resources at that time to address the hazardous conditions for residences near it.
That was a huge blessing but the eminent threat of losing our home was very real, stressful, physically and mentally challenging in a number of ways.
We have had big fires in our area over the last two decades of living here and huge fires happened prior to our moving here.
The key to being prepared for facing wild land fire in our opinion means knowing your neighbors and being aware of stakeholders who are either in favor of letting wild land fires burn even if threatening homes and live stock and those who believe in prevention and fighting the fires. And doing what you can with what you have and asking for help and not being prideful.
Over the last ten years the stakeholders have organized and have to come to agreement on being a more fire safe community as well as identifying both state, national and private land owner lands which are at greatest risk for a devastating fire.
Many can argue over as to why we are facing catastrophic wild line fires. Past logging practices of large units, failure to keep understory brush cleared, diversion of surface and subsurface water to the multitude of illegal pot grows and the unwillingness or inability of humans in keeping their own properties cleared of brush are the most common topic of discussion at the local fire safe council community meetings as well as within the various governmental agencies.
After the initial fire was attacked we had a period of relative safety. Dozer work, hand crews, hot shot smoke jumpers, planes and helicopters focused on reducing the fire spread to private homes.
Then the hot summer wind, low humidity and the strategic fire operations (back burns) brought us our evacuation order.
Thankfully we had the gift of time prior to this we moved our tractor, DR, rototiller, hand tools, carpentry, plumbing, wood working, sewing, food preservation, and electrical tools off site to a secure storage location.
That took us five trips. After so many years we here we have acquired of "stuff". We also took our fishing and hunting gear and photos, vital docs, some clothing and house hold goods.
We pulled out the fire foil we saved from a big fire years ago and later the forest service put it on the lower portion of the decks and porches as well as the vents on the house, worked on clearing hazardous brush, construction materials and 8 cords of stacked fire wood to a lower flat away from the house.
When the surge of fire became a more distinct hazard we still had a lot of work to do.
Most of our neighbors planned to stay and defend their homes. The community came together and spent a week going from homestead to homestead focusing on what could be done to reduce the threat.
We are now middle aged and elderly at our place and my husband cannot physically cut down huge trees and we did not have the heavy equipment to make a fire break. The neighbors came in a cut down trees that had died last winter during our epic once in 300 years snow event.
The forest service crowned the fire an Incident 1 fire and some resources were returned to our area. Now at this point there was fire throughout the north west and resources were tight.
The local fire safe council came in and their liaison worked tirelessly advocating for land owners for help and we sure did get it at our place.
The Vail Hot Shot Crew busted their rears helping us move away from the house combustible materials, the fire wood, timber, tools and items we had not been able to move off site.
The forest service set up folding water tanks and water lines and weed wacked. The locals moved the logs down to the lower flat to be later made into lumber.
They assisted in marking a trail the highway below to allow my husband to hike in an refill the fire pump gas tank if we were barred from entering our property due to the evacuation.
Now that things have calmed down we are doing a major purge of items in order to have a more organized and less cluttered home and tool area.
We are passing on items we have not used, no longer can use or need to others or it is being recycled or taken to the dump.
As I wrote before we had the gift of time. We did not have to evacuate at a moments notice.
Sadly so many others in other areas of our state faced fire storms and all they possessed was burned. They had to leave with just a few moments notice.
We are of the belief that you can replace stuff but cannot replace your life and preserving our lives and the lives of the fire folks take precedent.
We also installed years ago an under eave heavy duty misting systems and roof top sprinkler systems that the forest service thought warranted having the tanks and hoses at our place. We installed them many years ago after that last big fire. Our place is no longer considered expendable because we made the effort to keep things pretty well cleared, invested in the fire pump, sprinkler system and tools needed to put up the foil.
Being seen at local fire update meetings, making sure your place is on the fire maps, speaking out about fire plans and talking with fire crews on your road make you visible and we think that by doing so you are not just an address but a family.
Being kind and respectful to fire crews and asking logical questions also helps a lot.
I will try to post some photos later of the gear around the house and the sprinkler and misting system.
Post Wild Land Fire at our home place report
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