06-08-2016, 05:50 PM
(06-08-2016, 01:33 AM)Love Child Wrote: Put sprinklers all around your house! And clear away the brush! Unless you live in an apartment, then get the hell out! (I mean if it gets too close)
When my neighborhood was evacuated in the Black Hills Forest (SD), everyone was hosing down their roofs to keep hot ashes off shingles...the fire personnel were driving around with their bullhorns telling homeowners to turn off their water, because it affected their water pressure at ground zero....My home backed up to empty National Guard land so that is where helicopters landed after they picked water from nearby lake and dumped on fire.....then next morning, I woke up at 5:00 a.m. with the sound of bull dozers building a fire line behind my back fence....I had heard about evacuation while 30 minutes away at work. I drove like a maniac back to my house as i had two dogs in the house and once they close an area, you cannot get back in (not for any reason)......this happened over a period of a week. The only reason my house didn't burn, was a change in the direction of the wind the morning they were buiding fire line behind me.
It is so scary....I wasn't in my Colorado home few years ago, but my tenant had to evacuate from house I owned there....Fire was just a block away......I just prayed that HOA had insurance paid up......
You try to think what to take and your mind goes blank.....i couldn't even decide what to put in a suitcase....I thought of important papers, pictures as this was before computers...now, I would just grab my computer and a few photo albums....and of course, any pets I had at the time......
Today, if you live in the mountains, you have to follow fire abatement rules and keep property free of vegetation, especially juniper....pine cones need to be raked, etc........my house in the mountains had a fire hydrant right across the street so I was lucky to live within city limits at the time of the fires 3 or 4 years ago.....but since our landscaping is kept natural mountain landscaping, no grass, etc...it is more likely to "catch" fire....oh, I did sell that house recently and I am sad about that, but just couldn't breathe up there.....The inspector wrote up possible flooding. If you remember, Northwest Colorado had major flooding 3 years ago and destroyed most of the highways in and out of where my house was located....My house was not affected but now inspector is saying I my house could be subject to flooding....yeah, and Jesus could come for a visit tomorrow, too.......if it didn't flood then, it ain't going to flood ever.........