Facing evacuation

[k0k0peli]

The Amador-Calaveras Butte fire (see here), California's worst of the year, is now burning within eight miles from my home. Most of its spread is in another direction but evacuation is already being recommended only half a mile away. We had no power for two days; juice was restored only last night. I am not sure how long we can or want to remain. As soon as we receive a warning, we're outta here!

We spent yesterday gathering our most precious and irreplaceable possessions and loading them into our two SUV's. (We're on a dirt road in a remote mountain community.) That was a tough call as we have a museum-quality collection of ethnic crafts, a huge library, and of course a mass of musical instruments. And memories.

Ah, the instruments -- they're the point of this post. Which did I decide were "most precious and irreplaceable" ?? (Also the easiest to grab!)

* The bag of harmonicas and a handful of hand-carved fipple flutes.
* My two pro-quality guitars, an Ibanez Performance and an Ovation 12-string.
* An ancient Martin tiple; the Kala and Alvarez tenor 'ukes my wife and I gave each other; my cheap but lovely Harmonia concert 'uke.
* The cheap Harmonia mandola because it's not *too* big and a better mandola is still in my future.
* Grandpa's banjo-mandolin; my crafted KE Coleman mandolin; the old Lunacharsky I glued together and detuned for blues -- the inheritance, the costliest, and the funkiest. (The Rogue, Kay, and Harmonia mandos are Left Behind.)

What else are Left Behind? All the electric axes and musical electronics; they're all easily replaceable or just too big. Two dulcimers; two Cumbus o'uds (well, I might pack those, too); Orlando 5-string banjo; cheap Chinese-made 'ukes and Puerto Rican cuatro; Arte et Lutherie and Martin Backpacker guitars; and I don't know if I can load the old Varsity banjo-'uke. All the percussion. All the books, CDs, DVDs, records. Most of the paintings and pottery and weavings. Almost all cameras and lenses and other photo gear. Most of what we've accumulated over seven decades.

We have already decided that if our mountain house burns we will buy a motorhome and go nomad. But we would rather not.

My thanks in advance for expressions of concern. I'll ask: If YOU received an evacuation recommendation or order, what would you grab? Suppose your lead time was not measure in days, but in hours, or minutes? Yes, our instruments are literally "expensive kindling with strings" and none of them are worth a life. What would you choose?

Three hours past sunrise now. The sky is dark and smoky. Ash fall is heavy. At least we have power again so we can run the AC and filter the air a bit. If the word comes, we can be one in ten minutes or less, heading uphill, away from the fire, to take refuge in Reno NV. But I hope my next message comes from right here. C'ya!

[Purdy Bear]

Sending you lots of thoughts. Remember to take a video and photos before you leave of everything, this will help with insurance company. I could go on for ages and ages about evacuation kits etc. Remember your pets and their kits, and fundamentally please keep safe and leave in plenty of time, don't wait until you can see the flames. Your in my prayers.

Ps What would I take:

Prepacked Emergency kit, binder and pet emergency evacuation kits.
All the financial leggers
1 Orchestral flute
2 Ukeleles
2 Mandolins
All the car stuff - a considerable amount of my brothers.
1 dog
3 poly boxes full of tropical fish in bags.
trees in pots - they are only tiny
My fathers cacti
Pictures
Artwork mostly large cross stitch paintings done by my deceased mother.
Sewing stuff - I hat a lot of inherited stuff
Jewelry
PHOTOS
Genealogy stuff
etc etc.

My Pinterest board has extensive lists if anyone needs them.
https://www.pinterest.com/purdybear1...ghbs-edcs-etc/

[T.D.Nydn]

Hey kokopeli,,I've been watching this on the news,,hope it works out,,,best for you and your family.....ted

[hank]

Oh no! That's terrible news KoKo. You've got our prayers and best intention that you and your wife are spared this fire. Donna and I and our daughter Amy had the same choices to make the day before Katrina rocked our world down in New Orleans. We only took what would fit in our Avalon. I took my two mandolins and our dog leaving everything else to become flotsam and debre. Boy it wasn't pretty coming home to that muck and having to pile it all up in your front yard for the insurance company. It was amazing how much of that stuff that disappeared in that week or two afterwards in a apocalyptic world without power, water, or stores to buy food or water. Law and order kind of took a vacation.
Again good luck with this. If you go nomad your welcome to visit if you get to Northwest Arkansas. It's got some pretty camping areas, especially along the Buffalo River.

[bigskygirl]

Yeah that's tough. Loved ones, medicine, important papers...everything else can be replaced. We've struggled with fires here and helped man a Red Cross shelter when 60 families lost their homes recently....really brings home what's important.

Stay safe, keeping you in my thoughts. Let us know how it goes.

[Explorer]

That's unfortunate.

I hope everything works out for the best.

[k0k0peli]

UPDATE: Still okay so far. Winds are favorable now but will be rather UN-favorable this afternoon. We expect we have time to pack a few more things and put the place in order but we might have only an hour's notice after the winds shift. The sky is awful. We fortunately have no pets or nearby young or elderly kin to round up. The closest relatives were safely away before the fire started; the next closest have a big house they've tried unsuccessfully to sell -- they'd be just as happy to see it burn down.

Whatever hapens, we are fortunate. Cheers!

[foldedpath]

Here's hoping it never comes to that evacuation. I'm sure you're doing this anyway, but keep advised on the road status in the area, so you know your escape route is clear.

I haven't put much thought into what my S.O. and I would do in an emergency, because if anything happened here it would come without warning. It would either be an earthquake, or a sudden accidental fire -- either here in the house, or sparked from a neighbor's home that went up. The priority would be to get ourselves out of the house ASAP. Musical instruments and everything else would just go up (or down) with the house.

[hank]

Thinking about evacuating brings back a lot of zany memories. We had an older neighbor friend that came to me needing help on what to do so we helped her pack her stuff and had her follow us north to my mom's house in northeast La. That really added another can of worms to the craziness trying not to lose her and take care of her when confusion got the best of her. People get edgy when their world gets turned upside down and there seemed to be no shortage of folks that had run out of patience and manners in that line of cars. Some close friends almost waited too long to leave and were trapped in bumper to bumper traffic trying escape the gridlock of panicky people to join us. We had made this journey many times in the past but but never with so many and never with a direct hit causing this kind of destruction. I'll never forget the girls crying as we watched the storm slam dunk our homes on the national news.
Back in 2010 and even more so in 2011 drought bought fires to our area here in the river valley. Several fires broke out around us over a period of a week. One eventually came so close that we put what we could in our concrete storm room before we were asked to evacuate. This fire was a bad one that spread from a neighboring military base with one of our neighbors losing their home and all their possesions and another with a bunch of melted siding and heat damage. We gave our den furniture we had just replaced and a queen size matress we had also recently replaced to the family that lost everything. We were glad we hadn't had time to sell that stuff and had it in our basement needing a home. Between the tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and drought induced fires you just never know when it's your time to dance.

[TC-in-NC]

Keeping you and your family in my thoughts! I've got a cousin who lives out that way and have been hearing how bad it is.

[Mike Arakelian]

My cousin lost her home to a raging fire in San Diego a few years back, and my sister lost her home to a gas explosion many years ago. Both tough situations, but everyone survived and rebounded. My thoughts and prayers are with you. Be safe!

[JeffD]

Whatever hapens, we are fortunate. Cheers!

Please post when you can. Good luck.

[k0k0peli]

UPDATE (hopefully today's last): We're still here. The situation is not as dire as earlier. Fire has not spread this way much but the air is thick as a brick, aided and abetted by heavy clouds and cooler temps. We will keep an eye on conditions and, assuming no drastic changes overnight, we will decide in the morning whether to escape and to where. Everywhere inland is smoke-filled and every place on the Pacific coast is charging stratospheric vacation rates. Too bad we can't drive the SUV's onto a ferry to Alaska.

Enough about us. What about the instruments? All the saved ones are safely packed in a sealed SUV. I could not leave the 1925 Varsity banjo-'uke behind, nor the 1995 Martin Backpacker guitar -- so many memories, and they don't make'em like that anymore, and I just cannot consign ANYTHING with the Martin name to the tinder heap. The Cumbus o'uds will be Left Behind; plenty more where they came from! We have 34 stringed instruments; just twelve will go with us. Those we ARE taking will be subjected to some stress as temps go above 90f and relative humidity stays below 25%. Maybe I should leave some wet sponges in the car?

We are calm. We are vigilant. We are ready. But I look at the remaining mandolins, 'ukes, guitars, banjos, dulcimers, and I sigh.

[Hadji36]

k0k0peli,

Thinking about you and yours and hoping for your safety. I am no stranger to mother natures fury, having lived in South Florida for almost a decade and having to endure multiple hurricanes (some pretty bad). Please do not underestimate the power of nature...if it comes down to it, leave it ALL behind BUT you and your family (be mentally prepared for that scenario). There's not one (material) thing worth losing you or any member of your family. I know that this sounds fairly common sense, but, these situations can intensify very quickly.

Best of luck to you and yours.

[Purdy Bear]

Hang in their K0k0peli.

Is there anyway you could get a friend or family member to take some of the other instruments to a safe house, just temporarily?

I dread ever having to evacuate again, I have had to due to a wild fire and flood, and it's not nice.

[Nick Gellie]

KOKOpeli

I am a fire behaviour analyst and a fire scientist. I can do an assessment of the fire situation for you. Send me a PM and annotate a placemark on Google Earth by email to me as a KML file. Even though I live in Australia I understand fire behavior in wildland fuels in the US.

[8ch(pl)]

I hope all goes well for you. I think you should get away from the smoke and hope for the best. Smoke inhalation can seriously affect your future health. If you have a power failure your filtration is gone. God be with you and your family.

[Nick Gellie]

If the fire is spreading away from you then typically a fire backs into the wind at 1 yard/min. It can go faster if it spreads up a hill against the wind. Typically in pine forests it will burn at rate of spread towards you at 40-100 yards/min under 30 mph winds and fuel moisture contents of 4-5%. At lower wind speeds it will burn more slowly between 10-30 yards/min. If you are 8 miles from the fire, then it would take 1-2 h to get to you if the wind blew strong at 30 mph in your direction. Otherwise it would take several days as a backing or flanking fire. It seems as if fire eeather conditions modetated overnight. Temperatures in the mountains down to 60-65 and Rh has risen above 40%. Winds have eased which has helped. As you are inthe mountains tou will get extra relief as fuel moisture contents rise above 12%.

[Nick Gellie]

If the fire is spreading away from you then typically a fire backs into the wind at 1 yard/min. It can go faster if it spreads up a hill against the wind. Typically in pine forests it will burn at rate of spread towards you at 40-100 yards/min under 30 mph winds and fuel moisture contents of 4-5%. At lower wind speeds it will burn more slowly between 10-30 yards/min. If you are 8 miles from the fire, then it would take 2-6 h to get to you if the wind blew strong at 30 mph in your direction. Otherwise it would take several days as a backing or flanking fire. It seems as if fire weather conditions modetated overnight. Temperatures in the mountains down to 60-65 and Rh has risen above 40%. Winds have eased which has helped. As you are in the mountains you will get extra relief as fuel moisture contents rise above 12%.

[Beanzy]

Fingers crossed for you all there. If I could send you a dose of Irish or Cornish weather I would.

I think I'd keep the 1922 Calace, the 1890's fiddle. Interestingly both are instruments I found at ridiculous bargain prices and spent a bit restoring to beautiful, playing instruments. But their value would not be huge even now. Even though the others cost more I don't have the same sense of being a custodian as with those two. Really the rest could burn, cello, grand piano, tenor guitar, Kentucky mando, whistles, modern violins. Even the first edition books and artworks in the crunch would go up. I'm sure he youngster would like to keep his Ibanez Artcore semi-acoustic guitar, but the modern start and Classical guitar would be left. Old photos would be a thing I'd like to preserve, especially from my wife's side of the family.

If you do have to go you sound well prepared mentally to begin travelling lighter through the world. If it does come to it you sound like the kind of person who will treat it as an opportunity rather than a calamity.
Anyway keep safe.

[journeybear]

Hope you and yours are doing OK. It's been 14 hours since your last post. I'll bet you didn't get a lot of sleep last night. That may affect your judgement. My advice is: Leave anything of a banjo nature behind. OK, that Varsity banjolele, that's the one exception. Other than that, leave the gun, take the cannoli.

OK, kidding aside (though you probably need some comic relief), I hope you make it through all right. I would hate to have to decide anything like what you're dealing with. I may not have thought this through entirely, but I would rather face flood than fire. You can wade through flood waters; fire, not so much. I've weathered a bunch of hurricanes in my time here, and never evacuated. Some people do, a lot don't. We just hunker down and wait them out. It can be a real pain being unable to return under the evacuation order is lifted, which may take days. The storms usually turn out to be not as bad as they could be. Even in 2005, a hurricane season for the ages, we got through OK, for the most part. The worst was Wilma, which was a hundred-year storm. By most reports, there was water over 3/4 of the island. That may have included just a bit in some places, but still ... I was lucky, living then on a high point, not the case now. I leave most of my instruments stacked atop my chest of drawers on top of another chest of drawers, so they are no less than seven feet above the floor, some 10-11 feet above street level. I figure that's good enough, and even if it ever floods here again it should take a while for the water to get that high. If ever.

I'll be thinking of you, and wishing you well, as we all will.

[k0k0peli]

Hang in their K0k0peli.

Is there anyway you could get a friend or family member to take some of the other instruments to a safe house, just temporarily?

I dread ever having to evacuate again, I have had to due to a wild fire and flood, and it's not nice.

We're hanging! Alas, our nearby family homes are also in danger; they are as ready as we to flee. And we have objects rather more valuable than the remaining instruments that would take priority. We put what we could in the steel shipping container that was on this forested property when we bought it; we have some slight hope its contents might survive. Despite close calls with fires, floods, and earthquakes, we have never before needed to evacuate. It is really creepy...

I think you should get away from the smoke and hope for the best. Smoke inhalation can seriously affect your future health. If you have a power failure your filtration is gone.

I was a paramedic oh so long ago; I grok inhalation. When the smoke thickened and power was restored we put new filters on the AC with MPP ratings of 1900 for best protection in our sealed 12-year-old modular house. If we lose power again we will drive two miles away from the fire to our well-to-do in-laws and enjoy their generator-fired AC. And if our house still stands in a week, we'll get a genny too! We put that off too long.

I am a fire behaviour analyst and a fire scientist. I can do an assessment of the fire situation for you. Send me a PM and annotate a placemark on Google Earth by email to me as a KML file. Even though I live in Australia I understand fire behavior in wildland fuels in the US.

Nick: PMs sent and thanks so much!

UPDATE, two hours after sunrise: We are still here. I see little new news about the fire; I'll take the absence of bad news as somewhat good news. Our nearest weather station (here) now shows very slight wind from the SW which will slowly push the fire our way. If that wind strengthens, we will run!

A song from an old Ian & Sylvia album runs through my head, WHEN I WAS A COWBOY, with the couplet, "If your house is on fire and there ain't no water around / Throw your suitcase out the window, let the gol-durn shack burn down!" Message received.

We are on a rugged dirt road in a moderately sloping thick evergreen forest. We can go 1/2 mile downhill to pavement, around a bankrupt golf course, and up to the in-laws, further from the fire; or 1/2 mile uphill to asphalt, another 3/4 mile to the Kit Carson Pass highway, and then 1.5 hours to either the capitols of California or Nevada -- where the air will be little better than here.

I am not worried about our immediate survival. Nick's analysis indicates that we'll have enough warning for a smooth escape. But the fire situation in all the western US states is terrible, with decent air quality only near the Pacific coast. We may have to drop in on our kids 200km away in San Francisco after all. Their almost-5- and -7-year-olds might enjoy seeing Grandpa and Grandma crash in the living room. Hmmm, maybe we should take the extra 'ukes along to keep the wee buggers busy.

That is how things stand now. Thanks to all of you for kind wishes and generous offers. Cheers!

[Tavy]

We're all thinking of you, and wishing you the best of luck. Just remember the most important thing you can save is yourself!

[Jim]

Hope all is well,I Have had a few big fires close to my place in Colorado. My plan was one good Guitar and one good Mandolin, set the Llamas free and my dog and I leave in the pickup. Lots of stuff I would miss but it's still just stuff. I believe Heinlein said " You never really own anything you can't carry in two hands at a dead run." I hope it doesn't come to this for you or any of us. Good luck to you and yours Koko and I hope the fire is soon under control.

[Toni Schula]

I wish you all the best!