07/28/2024
I am not a qualified expert in fire safety. I worked a fire line in Oregon for three weeks as a young man. While it was a very intense experience, it provides me very little practical help in preparing for wildfire, other than having given me a very healthy respect for it. I did, however, have one other experience that is somewhat relevant. I directed the evacuation of I Corps during the Viet Nam war. My team and I got everyone that we were responsible for out safely, because we had spent a year thinking about it and planning for it. As it turned out, when push came to shove, very few of our plans actually got implemented as written, but because we had thought about the subject hard enough, long enough, and discussed it widely enough, we were able to modify plans expeditiously and intelligently as necessary. My guess is that the same kind of thinking and planning would be useful for us here in Mendonoma as well.
I am relatively certain that the various civil organizations with responsibility for fire safety have updated plans for virtually every possible scenario that can be imagined. I know for a fact that we are fortunate to have a wonderful team of professionals in place to help us when the excrement hits the fan. I also assume that most of us know very little about those plans beyond what is recommended should be in our go bag and the need to get out of Dodge when told to leave. Admittedly, I am a worse case thinker. I assume that if something can go wrong it will and the disagreeable wrinkle will develop at the very last moment. What do we do then? I won't belabor the point here, but I will say that one of my worries is a sudden wild fire in the community in the middle of the night. Conditions would have to be perfect, but climate change is making that confluence of conditions less and less unlikely every day. Embers fly very long distances and grassy meadows are ideal landing points.
I see the recent emergency drill here in The Sea Ranch to have been an excellent start and I look forward to what I very much hope is more community involvement and thinking to come. What is your plan if a big tree falls across your preferred road out of town and do you have enough gas in the car to get to where you are going? Do you know if the folks next door heard the siren? Where is the cat? Think now so you can act later. Think worst case so that you have alternatives when the excrement starts splattering around you.
