Away from the fire, but out in the rain. Probably the first time it has been rained on in more than 35 years.
Ensconced here in Southern California, my cars are kept in what I call the “distributed garage”. At one time, the distribution of cars involved multiple indoor and outdoor rented spaces. If one has paid attention to So-Cal pricing on such arrangements over time, one can understand the financially unreasonable aspect of going in that direction. Never mind that actually driving or working on one’s cars becomes a logistical exercise of getting there and back, and of ferrying drivers and cars around. It does, however, keep the collection small and the choices must be highly valued, in order to be willing to keep the rent checks and the awkward arrangements going.
In the last couple of decades, my car space has evolved to the “up the hill” and “down the hill” distribution. Up the hill has significant space for storage. Down the hill has the shop and excellent working space. The idea is to keep two cars, at any given time, down the hill (home base) for working on and for driving. Currently, down the hill, the Jeep is at the tail end of its refurbishment and fitting out, and the Lenham is up and running, licensed and insured. Up the hill sit the Mustang and the RX-3, along with some others.
Let’s work towards the point of my story. Every place has natural hazards, be they tornadoes, floods, fire, earthquakes. One can add some situational hazards, such as vulnerability to theft or wanton damage, based on where and how one parks his drive. Let’s stick to natural hazards, this time around. Locked, secure indoor storage for the “good cars” is taken care of, in my case, so I am “situationally” in good shape.
In Southern California, the two big risks are earthquake and fire (of the raging, out-of-control brushfire sort, that can easily consume garages and houses). The earthquake risk is hard to plan for, and arrives with no warning. But one can make sure that the garage roof is securely fixed to the walls, by using metal “ties” and by paying close attention to fasteners and techniques done to strengthen the entire structure, which is going to sway in the quake. Arrange for it to sway without going through spontaneous violent disassembly. You never know for sure until you get tested, so whether you got it right is a mystery until the time comes.
So, too, make sure there is nothing stored where it can fall on your car in an earthquake. If you can’t entirely avoid storing stuff in high places near your cars (which is a hard thing to avoid, for most of us), then the shelves and lofts need to have arrangements for retaining the things you stow on them. Also, put the lighter weight stuff up high, which makes sense anyway, and your back and shoulders will be happier.
Stow the lighter stuff up high, but screen it in so it doesn’t fall on your car in an earthquake.
Fire is another danger, for which one’s exposure can be minimized, but not eliminated. I throw the circuit breakers in the up the hill car barn, when I am not there, to reduce the chances of an electrical fire. The ventilation to the exterior incorporates spark and flying ember protection (there are simple passive technologies for that). A fire resistant roof and sealed eaves are fitted. Not much dangerous fire-prone foliage is growing in the vicinity of the garage, though I do have some desert ornamentals growing along one side, planted by the prior owner. The problem is that big So-Cal brush fires can often overwhelm defensible cleared spaces and fire resistance strategies. Flaming embers can jump long distances and embed themselves in odd little places. The ultimate deterrents are to not live in California in the first place, and to not live adjacent to the wild open spaces. I violate those two dictums, right off the bat, both up the hill and down the hill. I like breathing room and not looking into my neighbors’ windows—or having them look into mine. I like being close to wide open wild places to explore on foot, as I used to do as a kid.
My personal hedging strategy is to keep two highly valued (to me) cars, of the four, up the hill at any given time, and two down the hill, separated by about 75 miles. A single fire or earthquake will not be epicentered in both locations at once. Each location also has proper living space, if one gets evacuated out of the other. Moving two cars out of harm’s way is much easier than moving four of them. This “two site” arrangement wasn’t really planned out, but it just sort of happened, from my being a real estate opportunist who jumped at situations when circumstances offered what turned out to be well-priced properties that made me happy, and that worked out very well in the long run. I think Paul’s Port Orford situation might be a similar opportunity for him, one that will pan out in both the short run and the long run.
One may have been paying attention to the Southern California fires in the last week, particularly the biggest one, the Fairview Fire. Well, that one happens to be somewhat close to nibbling at my front doorstep, up the hill. It didn’t start out that way, but that’s how these brush fires go. In 2003, the Cedar Fire started from an illegal campfire, in the morning, many miles away. By the afternoon, our neighborhood had mostly burned down. The key to reading the situation seems to be to track where the smoke is going. In 2003, the edge of the smoke plume went right over our house. To the south, out the front door, the sky was a dark rusty brown color. To the north, out the back door, clear sky. Sure enough, houses on our street burned, but the bulk of the damage (hundreds of houses in our neighborhood, in the end) was mostly in the few blocks south of us.
Cedar Fire, 2003, San Diego. One of the most expensive and destructive fires ever in California, up to that time. Exceeded in destruction, death, and costs many times by California fires since then. These sorts of events are not outliers, but instead are part of living in many parts of California.
So, this fire at the edge of town in Hemet, CA, needed paying some attention to. Things can happen. We were in the middle of a “heat dome” and the ground was parched. But there were no winds to speak of, though the fires do create their own. Strong winds are what set these fires off to cover as much as dozens of miles in a direction, in just a few hours. Dry, hot, fire, wind, the combination of the four can create catastrophe. We had three of the four this last week. Still, I am down the hill, and I am trying to judge matters up the hill from fragmented news reports and from phone calls to locals.
Given the extreme dry conditions this year, along with the heat wave (90s to 100s up there, and not much less down here), the fire burned with vigor, despite there being no prevailing winds. The lack of wind meant that the fire didn’t burn in one direction, but instead burned, but more slowly, in almost all directions. The heat dome kept the environment hot and dry even at night, so this fire could just go and go, 24 hours a day.
The way it works is that the edge of the fire grows geometrically, and the expansion of the fire becomes compounded over time. At any given point, the fire simply consumes what is in front of it. But as the fire expands in all directions, the flame front gets much bigger over time. It doesn’t move faster over time in any one direction, but instead expands in all directions, moving forward at a constant speed, and engulfing the landscape at ever-increasing helpings.
The fire also creates its own weather. This area, roughly aligned with the San Andreas fault, where the fault turns sharply inland from the coast, is geologically configured as a series of deep valleys or canyons with steep valley walls, generally north-south to northwest-southeast (the “badlands” of the sort that were so difficult for pioneers to cross). The air falls off the valley sides into the valleys, and then runs downhill. This will naturally pull the fire along, even in the absence of prevailing winds. The vast temperature changes and differences within the area of the fire create additional updrafts and downdrafts, and the notorious “fire vortexes” or “fire tornadoes”.
Press photo of a fire vortex, Fairview Fire.
The ignition point was roughly fifteen miles away from the car barn, to the north-by-northwest, as the crow flies. But this fire is moving primarily south-by-southeast, even as it expands in all directions. The landforms are dictating the movement of the fire, rolling downhill to the south and southeast.
Ignition point on the upper left, most of the fire’s movement is to the lower right. This map was last updated Thursday evening, even though it is posted as current on Friday afternoon. Real time hard data is hard to find in the middle of a fast-moving fire.
The fire started Monday afternoon. People want to know how it started. In a sense, it doesn’t really matter what started it. These fires will start, always. Avoid fire in a chaparral area for a few years, and you still will eventually get one, but it will be more intense and dangerous, as the brush will be bigger, denser, and drier (dead) underneath. By Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, the broadest reach of the fire line, to the south and the southeast, put the car barn roughly in its path. Closer to seven(?) miles away now, not fifteen, but the fire was moving relentlessly. Time to get busy, get up there, and move some things out. I had the Mustang up there, the Mazda RX-3, some equipment and tools, and some family heirlooms to bring down. This would take two trips, about two hours each way, plus loading and unloading. The other, lesser cars and parts would have to ride it out.
Getting up there on Thursday afternoon, there were all sorts of signals, good and bad. The neighbors on each side have quite a few animals, dogs, horses, and goats. The animals were already moved out, and the ambient animal noises were missing. Neighbors were either already gone, with the usual cars, trailers and other things absent from their properties, or they were packed and queued up to go. If you are going to leave, it is best to do it as early as you can. Beat the rush and traffic jams, save time for unexpected complications, and have time to go to a “plan B” if a battery or a fuel pump conks out. Having driven out through the flames in 2003, I can tell you it is not something you want to do. The danger is that your vehicle will stall in the middle of the fire, leaving you in there. The fire sucks up all the oxygen, and fills everything with smoke. Engines don’t want to run right. My truck was a manual shift, so I could keep the engine racing in low gear, sort of, bucking and coughing as it went, acting like it had a load of bad gas. There was only one way out and down hill, so “plan B” was to hit the clutch and try to roll to safety, if necessary. There was no other choice. But, all’s well that ends well. Evacuate early, that’s the lesson.
Cedar Fire, 2003, San Diego. My house is/was behind the black smoke in the upper center of the photo. It, and the RX-3 in the garage, made it through, while many neighbors did not.
Back to this week, there was haze everywhere, but the smoke from the fire was going straight up, to sort of spread out and head lazily in a western direction. For all the smoke and haze, there was no smell of smoke at all, which was strange, but it was also a good sign. So, too, no smoke plume over the property was a profoundly positive signal. The fire may be moving in my direction, but the lack of a smoke plume overhead buys quite a bit of time to see things turn for the better, as the fire will likely move much more slowly. The bad signs, the fire was spreading out in all directions, including towards where I stood. I could see the fire line while I drove in, though the line was behind the crest of the nearby mountaintops at the horizon, viewed from the property. Distances are also visually foreshortened in the wide open spaces, so while the fire looked almost on my doorstep, it was still miles away.
A view from the car barn on Thursday afternoon. This is one angry fire, though it appears closer than it is. With a tailwind, a fire like this one, in hot, dry weather, can move very quickly.
The fire was vigorously burning up to the tops of the canyon sides, but not down from the crest into the next valley. This is the same principle in which you hold a lit match with the flame above your fingers, and it will not burn quickly down to your hand. The fire loves to run up the canyon walls, but is less likely to burn down the other side, absent a tailwind or particularly flammable material. One canyon over, that’s how it was burning. Perhaps, if it keeps going, it will pass just to the north of us as it heads southeast, as we stay protected by one last valley wall between us and the fire.
The fire fighting planes were bombing the fire with the pink stuff. You see them flying low, and all of a sudden they dip out of sight, either behind the crest of the hills or into the smoke, and then pop out in a steep climb, having deposited their load. The efficacy of their work is obvious. The angry pulses of rusty black smoke settle into a haze of more light grey smoke, hovering but not roiling quite so much. The intervals between drops are where the fire gets angry again.
Also Thursday afternoon, after the fire bombers had made a series of runs, dropping the pink fire retardant. The bombing really quiets down the intensity of the fire. The plane in the photo has just finished its drop, from left to right, and is doubling back to the staging area to refill.
First trip, load up the photos and keepsakes, and the Mustang. The flatbed trailer tires, now 14 years old, were recently checked but had deflated from 45 pounds to about 25 or so. Not good. Better pump them up before the power goes out, as I didn’t bring my generator with me. Fifteen seconds after plugging in the small compressor, the power went out. Oops. The neighbors, having left or mostly left, didn’t have generators available either. Like the silence of no animals, the cacophony of generators when the power goes out, which it does often up there, was also absent. That was the thing, the area is always alive with animal, machine, and people sounds, as sound really carries in the quieter places, absent the hum of the city. It was unnaturally quiet. You heard the fire fighting planes and helicopters in the distance, and that was about it. The air was still and the fire was still miles away. Maybe the power will come back on. Plan B is to slowly drive down the hill, and seek out a power source for the compressor along the way. After dinner and final packing, the power did indeed come back on. Yay! Get right on it, in case it goes out again. There is only one main power line into the entire area, and when it goes down, that’s it.
The wait for the power to maybe come back on gave me an opportunity to have dinner, and to do some careful extra packing, tying down of the car to the trailer more comprehensively, and to test the trailer brakes and lights. Trailer brakes, check. Trailer lights; turn and brake are OK, but no running lights. Hmm.
Also, the hazard switch on the truck seems to be broken. Not good. Absent taillights and a slow trip down the hill, blinking hazard lights would have been a great thing. In an evacuation, people can be absent-minded (understandable, there is a lot of thinking and disorientation going on), so I wanted to be as visible to them as possible. I was not able to troubleshoot the running lights, so I will just need to go as-is.
Evacuations are odd events. This one was my fourth one, with never actually losing the house in the first three, though number two in 2003 was a close thing. I’ll never forget finding a line of sight from a far distance, and identifying my roof as still there, contrary to all expectations, even as many others around us were gone. I knew the immediate neighborhood had been hard hit. All the dramatic news shots of the day were showing our neighbors’ houses burning. Seeing that kind of thing creates a fatalistic view of things. Even prior to the actual evacuation, you wander around, on the way out for maybe the last time, saying “good bye” to everything. It’s not really about all of the stuff. It’s more that the place where you nest, where you feel comfortable and at home, is under threat of being vaporized. Very disorienting, even before the fact. It must be a similar feeling to when war moves towards your neighborhood. In your head, you say good bye to what you have known. But there is (or at least needs to be) the optimism that it will all be OK, and you keep the spirits up, until you know, 100% for sure, that the cause is lost.
In the meantime, you may as well scatter stuff around and not put things away, as you pack the keepsakes, eat a meal, and sit down for a moment to watch the fire. If it all burns up, it doesn’t matter. If it is all still there, you don’t care, as you get to celebrate victory over the brush with disaster.
As the sun goes down Thursday evening, the northern horizon glows from the fire. The fire is only 5% contained at this point, having burned 27,000 acres, so far. Amazingly, only 12 structures are known to have burned; again, so far. There are two known deaths from people trying to escape the flames, likely by trying to drive through them in their car.
Finally, at 8:00 or so on Thursday night, I pull out on my first return trip. It’s dark, and the north horizon has an orange glow along the crest of the hilltops. Occasionally the orange glow rises and flares like a sunspot being emitted. Absent the danger and potential loss involved to yourself, and certainly to others (two people were killed, early on, trying to drive out through the fire), it is a bit mesmerizing to watch the fire and the smoke. Who doesn’t like to occasionally stare into the campfire, the fireplace, or the wood stove, and zone out to the little dancing fire show, internalizing something powerful that you can see, and maybe hear and smell? Separately, the real danger to your stuff, and potentially to yourself and to your manner of living, has a certain frission of its own. To me, it is not the same, but not entirely dissimilar, to that feeling when you go out to queue up for a car race. It sets your nerve ends tingling. One difference is that you asked to be in the car race, and the fire and evacuation were forced on you, no matter how you felt about it.
I think there is a certain PTSD effect associated with the evacuation, especially as I have had prior, rather traumatic experiences (always ultimately somewhat acceptable personal outcomes; but nobody wants to witness even his neighbors losing their houses). This article is no doubt a compensation of sorts, to keep me busy while the situation plays out.
Here’s the current status of things (Friday, roughly midday). The edges of a Mexican hurricane have settled into the region. This was bound to bring both high and unpredictable winds, and likely some strong rain. More rain than wind, that would be good. Wind without much rain, horrible. So far, it looks like some amount of insistent soft rain, and not too much wind. As good as one could reasonably hope for. Locals who stayed put (against evacuation orders, but people will do what they will do) tell me they are having trouble detecting the course of the fire, as they are clouded in and it is raining, so they have no broader visibility. I have no contact with anyone actually very near the site of the car barn, as they have all left the area. I assume we are OK, and the rain will keep the flame front at bay. I hope.
Everyone for miles around is under mandatory evacuation, as of Thursday evening (the areas marked in brownish-red). Not everyone has left, so the Sheriff’s Department has been going door-to-door, both to ask people to leave, and also to find out how many people are staying, and where they are. Needing or deciding to evacuate late puts both the residents and the responders at extra risk, as does not leaving at all.
I was never able to go back for my second trip, as it was 10 at night on Thursday, when I got home from the first trip, I was exhausted, and I would have needed to unload before going back. I also had a weird moment on the way down the hill. Having no trailer running lights, and running slow with a heavy trailer and older trailer tires, I was careful to slow down and pull over in the wide parts of the two lane roads to let the occasional overtaking car pass me (almost no one was out on the road, I’d never seen it that empty, but those who were out were traveling much faster than I was). Half way home, when I blinked to test the brake lights, as I would blink them to help the overtaking vehicles see me in the dark, the left side truck brake light lit up the front of the Mustang, on the trailer, with white light. That’s not right. Later on, where I could safely pull over, I found that something, flying debris perhaps, had ripped the left side lens off. The bulb was intact and working, but the red lens was gone. The Mustang seemed OK, fortunately. But it was a freak event. In the meantime, the CHP had closed all the roads in the area, and every one all around was under evacuation orders. I would not be going back. One and done. The RX-3 is at risk, but perhaps that could be some sort of a good omen. It rode out the 2003 Cedar Fire in my garage, even as the neighborhood burned down. Fortunately, the Mustang and the Jeep were already off-site at that time. Perhaps the RX-3 (and all the spares for it stored up there) can ride out another fire and evacuation. If not, it must be a case of tempting fate one time or many. I would feel the loss on that one. I have no strong particular attachment to the rest of it, specifically, though I would hate to see the place get destroyed, generally. MGs, RX-7s, the circle track car. Unlike the four cars I particularly value, if they go, I can mentally treat it as it was just meant to happen that way. And, of course, the people dear to me are OK, and that matters the most.
Somewhere between leaving the car barn and halfway home, something happened here. Very strange.
I am now in a sort of limbo, and the news for today (Friday) is almost nonexistent, just a rehash of yesterday’s evacuations and spread of the fire. I’m waiting for news, but I suppose “no news is good news”? I will likely need to go up that hill to witness 100% certainty on the outcome of things, no matter what the news says, or doesn’t say, as the case may be. As the Magic 8-Ball is known to say, “too soon to tell”, or “check back later”.
Magic 8-Ball says “too soon to tell”.
I apologize for the rather disjointed timeline and set of subjects, and the often grammatically incorrect nature of today’s post. I usually rework and carefully edit, but my heart isn’t in it today. As I mentioned above, this is a work of catharsis while I await news. I will report in the comments as I learn more, but a few miles of distance from the flames, cooler weather, and some rain, and the “up the hill” should be OK. Proof when I see it for real.
A quick postscript, or perhaps a progress report. Hurricane Kay, off of Mexico, brought slow steady rain and humidity to Southern California yesterday, but very little wind in the area of the fire. A “best possible” scenario. The edge of the hurricane was a huge boon to getting the fire under control.
Good news all around, as the fire has stopped getting larger, and containment is well along. Evacuations have been cancelled in some areas.
Mostly out of the woods now.
After your comment above, it is starting to sound like your RX-3 may have some fire-retardant properties, or at least a healthy dose of good luck. These things are always terrible to hear about, and I hope you and your family come through it all OK.
I live far away from fire country, and am glad of it. But as you say, we all have our weather things and ours is tornados. I also knew a fellow who kept several classic cars in a large pole barn, but after a particularly heavy snowfall one year the roof caved in and several of his cars were destroyed.
Now, every time I hear of some kind of natural disaster, I wonder how many cars of various kinds will be lost. Every year a handful are lost to natural disasters or accidents so the numbers will continue to dwindle, no matter how carefully they have been preserved.
Your post-postscript was most timely as I was wondering how the last couple of days went. I hadn’t caught it if you mentioned it before but had always wondered about your storage situation, having been a CA-dweller in the past I didn’t think you had a polebarn behind your house.
The fire thing is troubling, and looking back at the places we lived I don’t think we ever thought fire in the neighborhood would be an issue until the big 1991 Oakland hills fire occurred and then we lived in similar situations for the next 20 years and had our own house fire right at the end due to a manmade construction issue. Now, we have big fires here in CO too all the time, and the big Boulder/Superior area fire last year brought it into relief again once more for those people living in mostly flat and manicured area neighborhoods as opposed to the hills and canyon areas.
It’s neither a good nor a bad thing I guess, but currently I’m not attached enough to any of the cars we own to worry about them in that sort of situation, but we do play the mental game of which one would we use to evacuate ourselves if need be…Depending on the season this tends to differ throughout the year, but yeah, I do not envy having to load up a trailer and choosing which one to take etc.
Fire is probably our biggest worry here as well, floods happen too, the last damaging tornado was 20 years ago but not far away, earthquakes a bother I’m glad to be done with, and the swarms of locusts I’m just not worried about (yet).
Glad to hear that it seems things may turn out well enough – at least this time, surely there’ll be another not too far off.
Your description of the smoke causing the engine to have issues and potentially stall – I assume that potentially makes an EV (at least a charged one) a better choice to flee with. I wonder how it is with flooding too, nothing to potentially hydrolock, but hopefully all the electrical connections are well enough sealed to survive at least temporary submersion. There are likely downsides as well that I’m not considering.
I would say the fires of today are outliers when I compare them to the ones I experienced in Southern California in the 60’s and 70’s. They are bigger and far more aggressive (if you will) than before especially in the sense that they are now occurring every year. In 1970 the Laguna Fire (some call it the Kitchen Creek Fire) was the third biggest in California history behind an 1889 and 1932 fire. I watched it run west from atop Del Cerro towards El Cajon and Spring Valley. I have pictures of it.
The Cedar Creek fire of 2003 was the biggest in California at the time but has been greatly surpassed by eight others since then and all after 2017. Things are getting drier. California is full of mountains, hills, and valleys which can funnel fierce winds. People are moving out into the hinterlands and will continue to lose houses and more.
https://www.fire.ca.gov/media/4jandlhh/top20_acres.pdf
The Laguna Fire was the one that burned close to my childhood home, but we squeaked by, after doing the evacuation thing as the fire approached very closely (the Mustang was a front-line witness to that one). My introduction to this sort of thing, at age ten. 1970, 2003, 2007, and now 2022.
Your account has really put a human face on the reality of fire danger. I know that part of So Cal is more lightly populated and has a lot of grass and brush land as well as challenging topography for firefighters. You’ve communicated the anxiety that you experience during these crises. I am a life long Californian, living primarily in the metropolitan East Bay but have spent the last almost forty years in the South Bay.
I had lived near the East Oakland hills and was very familiar with the back roads in the area as I had ridden them on my first motorcycles as a kid. I had moved away well before the fire storm, but that was very bad, and very close to the foothill residential areas.
Currently I live in the lower foothill area, about one mile from the east city limit of San Jose. Last year we were on vacation in Oregon when we learned of a pre evacuation status in our neighborhood. This was because of a fire near Mt. Hamilton. That caused us a lot of anxiety as we had to pass through very smokey areas near Sacramento on highway 5 on the way home.
I suppose that wild fires have become an accepted natural disaster like tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes. I honestly don’t worry to much about the quakes, they can’t be predicted and they are usually over pretty quick.
Human life is the most valuable thing, our residences are also, but even our stuff, like cars, are important to us also. The best we can do is plan ahead like you have done. Thanks for our story.
Although I don’t live in a naturally fire-prone area, I have always feared fires and have been careful to fire-proof my home as much as practically possible, as well as putting Nest smoke (and carbon monoxide) detectors in nearly every room that will signal my mobile phone if they go off when nobody is home to hear the alarm. Unfortunately, while I worried about fires, I didn’t protect myself against flooding and that turned out to be the hazard that burned me, so to speak. My lower floor where I lived – partially below ground though I didn’t think of it as a basement – took on water very slowly, which I didn’t notice due to a poorly done renovation that didn’t include the necessary moisture barriers or drainage, so water seeped through the floors, the underlayment and padding, and carpet without me noticing since only areas with heavy objects on them pressed hard enough for water to go through. So my many boxes of books, magazines, and much of my vinyl LP collection was destroyed, and furniture damaged. I considered buying shelves to put this stuff on, but it was so crowded it would have been a difficult job just clearing space for them and mostly it just wasn’t on my mind (I had little warning of having to move here – one of the biggest problems with renting rather than owning your home; the owner can decide to sell and suddenly I have one week to pack up my stuff and move – thus stacks of boxes everywhere). So I had several people’s stuff crowding the basement and I didn’t realize the carpet/floor was wet and water wicked its way through everything above it. In a separate and unrelated issue, the upstairs shower drain wasn’t properly sealed so water dripped onto the ceiling below, again dry and unnoticeable from below until one day the ceiling drywall collaped. The walls themselves have become moldy and mildewy and will need replacing, but it’s a major job to even figure out where water is getting in – there are many culprits including grading toward the house instead of away from it, gutters that are too small, lack of moisture barriers, a roof in poor condition, lack of sump pumps, and numerous other issues, most of which were discovered near the beginning of the pandemic when I didn’t want lots of strangers walking around inside my home ripping things up. I’ve dug trenches around the house that keep water away, which has helped. Many homes around here have been similarly affected in recent years, and climate change has raised the water levels enough to threaten housing that was once safely above the water table.
Anyway, sending hope that the fires will avoid you, your abodes, and your cars, as well of course as any people in its path, and will be extinguished as soon as possible.
I realize it isn’t really my business (which generally doesn’t stop me 🙂 ) , but most of what you are doing in regard to your home would not seem to be your responsibility, or certainly not something I would expect or ask my own tenants to deal with. Unless your rent is so far under market value as to preclude it, a potential move might be in order.
In regard to selling, as a landlord I am aware this is an issue for tenants, while my leases aren’t written in a way as to completely favor a landlord, they are written (by my choice) to protect a tenant in the case of me deciding to sell, i.e. the lease, usually annual, must be honored to full term, and if I were to decide to sell I will give my tenants multiple months to prepare. This is surely something you (or any renter) could and perhaps should ask of their prospective landlord.
Again, I don’t presume to know your situation, and as competitive and as it is to be a tenant these days, good landlords do exist that care about more than just collecting a rent check. A house that is becoming damaged, especially from mold and moisture, will generally lose far more in resale value than the rent will generate. No good landlord wants to see that.
One of those moves involved the landlord selling her properties (small early-1950s quadplexes) to a builder who wanted to tear them all down and put up new mid-rise large building, with the city backing the builder in a sort-of eminent domain situation which negated the terms of the original lease which said I could live there for at least the next year; the new building or the land it was on would now be partially owned by the city or state as an extension of a state university, a joint public/private project. I (and several others) went to city hall trying to fight this, but got nowhere (guess who had more money and influence?). The official account of our complaints at city hall recorded that there were no objections to the sale and reneging of the original terms of the lease, which wasn’t even close to the truth. Both the landlord and the builder she sold her properties to were quite shady and corrupt.
Glad to read that the news is good. Whew.
I used to feel that my part of the country was – if one could put up with the cold – generally not prone to natural disaster, but in the past several years I’ve been proven quite wrong about that. We’ve had tornadoes and severe wind storms like never before (and are currently struggling through a historic drought which brings with it the very much increased chance of uncontrolled wildfire). And after having trees fall on 2 of my cars in 2 years, I’m done thinking anyone is immune to the ravages of nature.
“I’m done thinking anyone is immune to the ravages of nature.”
Not anymore as the entire world is finding out…
I’d say it’s more like we’re finding out the world is not immune to the ravages of everyone.
I’ll go with that
Thank you for this extraordinary and timely write up. I seriously doubt I would have recovered enough from it all to take time to share with CC.
As a fellow California dweller, who lives in a semi rural area, I can’t help but worry about these things. And then, eventually, if it ever rains much this winter, we will have to worry about floods. Sigh.
There was an aluminum Slant-6 engine on a stand in a shop consumed by the Glass fire. Here it is:
A friend lost his parents house in the Tubbs Fire circa 2017. Not many acres but lots of houses, since right in the City of Santa Rosa, and a high number of deaths. Very similar to the Oakland Hills fire that I had a front seat to. He lost all his cars up there and in pictures they looked like that. So hot aluminum was melted. That fire took out a lot of vintage cars hidden in garages.
The latest report (Sunday mid-day) is that things are starting to dry out and heat up a bit. Most importantly, the wind is benign (so far) and blowing gently from the southeast to the northwest, squarely into the fire front, as it relates to where I sit. The combination of dry, heat, and strong wind is the dangerous one, and the wind is absent (for now). I am fueled up, taillight replaced, and ready to go with the second trek up the hill this evening, if things deteriorate again.
My specific area is off the mandatory evacuation, so I can get there. Significantly, Cal Fire, who has a lot of intelligence and experience on how this goes, has deemed my immediate area safe enough. I defer to their judgement, whichever way they flip on evacuations. They know best. I am still not too far from mandatory evacuation areas, so I am sort of back to midweek, constantly looking at probabilities, but back to a baseline of “OK for now”.
There are thunderstorms predicted for this evening, which is always a bit of a wild card. The local fire agencies are well aware of that kind of thing and are ready to do their work, if need be. It sort of stands apart from the big fire, as an issue to pay attention to. I am mostly immune to local fires started by lightning, which is common up there, but some of my neighbors are not (direct adjacency to open brushy zones and/or failure to seal up eaves and maintain defensible open spaces).
As to these CC reports, doing them soothes my anxiety a bit, gives it an outlet, and organizes my thoughts. It helps me, as I pace around and incessantly refresh the most useful informational websites on the fire. It is also September 11th, which is a good reminder that while I may be wrapped up in my own situation, it is nothing compared to others, including those who found themselves and their homes inside the flame front this week.
According to the latest Cal Fire report, 2,284 people are fighting this fire, and they have achieved 45% containment. I am extraordinarily thankful for every one of them putting themselves out there, to protect all of us.
What a nightmare!
I have never lived in a fire-prone area, but as somebody who lived in the Florida Keys for almost 20 years, I am very familiar with having to evacuate from my home.
When I moved, I didn’t miss all the decisions about what to take and what to leave, the last-minute rush to get out, and the helplessness one feels after you do get out and can do nothing other than sit and wait, hoping your house and posessions (and the other people in your life) come through OK.
But I’ll take a hurricane over a wildfire any day – the hurricane is more predictable.
All I can say to you is good luck, Godspeed, and we will all be pulling for you!
Stupid Question – Would a garage made of cinder block walls & a metal roof survive in a canyon fire assuming you gave it the same fire protection (clear outlying brush, etc) that you would give any building? Just trying to understand the dangers and yes, I see the melted aluminum engine block above…
Very good point. Hardening against fire can be done, and it can be done by degrees. Cinder blocks and a metal roof would reduce the chances for fire disaster. When working with blocks, one needs to be careful in the engineering and construction, so it doesn’t come down in a pile in an earthquake.
In the end, it is time, effort, money, and how one wants to spend his days. There is a crossover between wise preparation, and of obsession. The cars are just inanimate things, in the end. They please, and they burden. One makes his bets, invests in his preparations and strategies, and then sees how it turns out over time.
It is a bargain of sorts. Make your decisions, do your preps. It works out or it doesn’t. No mulligans, no re-dos. Same with personal decisions and preps. Life is a risk. Getting exposed to this sort of stuff at an early age and repeatedly has both sensitized me to the anxiety of going through it, but also to doing what I can in the middle of it, and seeing my way through.
I actually worry more about “down the hill”, as 2003 showed that one can be quickly overwhelmed there with hardly any notice, as we were and are situated right on the hard edge of the interface between built-out neighborhoods and open wilderness. Up the hill is situated in the center of an area with relatively good regional preps for fire. As I have not moved my down the hill residence, my personal calculation speaks for itself, I suppose.
I dunno, every time I read about each year’s catastrophic fire damage there’s two main thoughts; 1-WTF are they living in woods/lands that burn? & 2-WTF are their buildings so flammable? How many fires will it take? (same goes for people east of us) Obviously life itself is a risk but there are certain things one can do to minimize some aspects of those risks, similar to lockout/tagout when servicing machinery. Maybe cinder block, masonry or poured concrete are not the most aesthetically pleasing building materials but I see no reason, say, that they could not be used as the core of a house/garage structure, a shelter for what you value when fire season is nigh.
Fortunately you have both an “up the hill” and a 75 mile distant “down the hill” so barring major cataclysm at least one of those locations should survive. We’ve got just the one spot but only two cars and coastal OR. is as fireproof as it gets. Just don’t ask about earthquakes or tsunamis…
I too will never understand why so many houses in the US (unlike in many other countries) are made of wood. It burns easily, and also settles and sags, is creaky and squeaky when you walk on it, is vulnerable to termites and carpenter ants, and is damaged if exposed to moisture and water over a long period. Occasionally I’ll see a house that burned to the ground except for the chimney which is still standing. There’s an old joke about since the “black box” is the only part of the aircraft that survives a crash, why not build the whole plane out of the black box? That’s essentially what two of my old homes were like – the whole house was built like the chimney, all masonry with steel reinforcement. There were several fires in this development over the years, but never a house that burned down and all were quickly rebuilt after the fires. I know wood is easy and cheap to build with, and there are both environmental advantages and disadvantages of its use compared with other materials. But something as flammable and easily damaged as wood is not appropriate for home building in my opinion.
Then there is the cedar shake roof. There are still a few of them here, in my neck of the woods. The house version of jumping up and down shouting “pick me, pick me!”, when the brush fire comes to town.
Thank you for sharing about your current predicament. I have friends that I consider family in the SF Bay area and every time I hear about a fire I pause and check that they are ok. Google tells me that satellites are most often the first to spot wildfires. Thank goodness for that amazing ability. While I have very strong convictions on the usage of drones I do hope some companies are hard at work retrofitting existing military drones that have the payload capacity to carry a decent amount of fire retardant. They could be securely housed at relevant Fire Stations. Trailered by fire engine to a temporarily blocked off section of road predetermined to be long enough to launch. Controlled remotely as they currently are. Fire Fighters would communicate effectiveness to the controllers and responsible for refueling and fire retardant replenishment. It’s time to repurpose some for domestic use and I can think of no better use than intercepting fires in remote areas.
Stay tuned, I have been intensely studying how Cal Fire fights these fires. It is quite a story (IMO), and they do incredible work. I will post here on CC, shortly, what I have learned.
I suspect that drones could substitute for the work Cal Fire and the local California agencies do, but they might not improve on it. In other states and areas, added drones might make a big difference, depending on the existing area capabilities and skill sets.
Be safe, I hope all will be well again.
Monday morning, soft gentle rain, lower temperatures, little wind. I think the wind never coming up in a big way was critical on this one. Not “fully contained” yet, but I think we are 99% out of the woods now. Evacuation orders, away from the actual fire zone, are minimal. I trust Cal Fire on that. Evacuation orders, or not, is the way to gauge what the experts really think is likely or somewhat likely, no matter what is said in the media or in press conferences.
Whew ! .
Scary to read this and the comments .
I guess they no longer call them “Dorade Bombers” ? .
We have everything other states don’t want : fires, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes and riots .
-Nate
Soft gentle rain San Diego County seems to be yet another flash-flooding monsoon out in the Mojave. We were one mandatory evac zone away from the CZU fire in Santa Cruz last year and hosted three families who were evacuated for a week. We moved valuable documents and heirlooms to friends’ houses well away from the fire, plus my wife’s car (not my truck or either of my motorcycles), packed the mountain bikes in the van and left town. Good luck!!!