mercredi 31 janvier 2018

Post-SHTF wild fires! No fire department

Quote:

How many times more likely would wild fires be post-SHTF?
A thousand times more? A hundred thousand times more? Basically just assume the entirety of the rocky mountains will burn the first summer, and the same for the cities, prairies....anything that isn't wet year round or nothing but rock. Everything will burn.

I live in the woods. Fire is the by far, the #1 threat. I am an officer in the local fire department but I realize that in the event of a serious forest fire I am on my own. The department is for the community, not individuals. With a major fire they will be busy trying to save farms and clusters of houses, not my isolated little homestead in the middle of the trees, and of course in the PAW, they won't exist at all.

I also have resolved to never evacuate. Losing my home is no different from losing my life at this point. I am too old and poor to ever rebuild. If my house burns and I survive it means a short miserable life on the streets or scraping by in my mother in laws trailer house. No thanks. I'd rather die fighting.

So what does that leave me? If you are going to fight to save your home you have to be your own fire department, true now, even more so in the PAW.

Luckily...I have water. An irrigation ditch full of water and a 158 GPM gasoline pump set up with 1 1'4 water lines running to rooftop sprinklers and hoses. When I turn them on its like a localized rain storm. For comparison, your normal household system provides about 10GPM in the best case. I don't get the full 158 on my roof I'm sure, but I bet I get a 100. It runs for an hour on a gallon of gas. If I see the fire coming I could put tens of thousands of gallons into the ground, the trees, etc in a few hours.

I have two SCBA air packs and eight air tanks. I have many training courses in wildland firefighting. My house is sided in stucco.

I have chainsaw (or three) and heavy equipment and every year I increase my fire defenses.

But most importantly, I won't be leaving. Most houses that succumb to wildfire are not consumed in an overwhelming wall of fire. They are blasted with embers until one finds its way into a soffit vent or catches the porch on fire, etc. Small fires with no one to put them out.

If you can breath and you can spray water you can fight fire. Assure those two things and its most of the battle.

Impregnable passive defense are a much much greater challenge than active ones.

And if all that fails and I decided I want to live another day afterall, I can lay on the bottom of the ditch for a couple hours with my SCBA. (They work just like a SCUBA in shallow water)

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Post-SHTF wild fires! No fire department

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