Hiking Out Of The Forest Fires

What an amazing story of survival! This couple is truly and inspiration. I love that he says "You just put one foot in front of the other and just keep on going. And if you fall you just get up and keep on going." This exactly what you need to survive, the will to just keep going!

 

These fires happened during our dry season, too. It was two kids who started this particular fire; it killed 14 people. When these events were going on, I was amazed at how many people are unaware of the dangers of having fires during dry season. Now that I am a land owner, I find myself more concerned with dry season. It is frightening to think that I could lose everything I have worked for or even my life over a stupid decision.

 

yeah,that couple is very fortunate..wildfires where i am is a large/huge concern to me..mainly during a drought..one wrong move from a wildfire,or spark will take out this old house real fast..seeing how it was built in the 1930's...we had a real bad drought one year.in which we had fires popping up everywhere.we were very fortunate that year..

 

God protect us from such! Whereas I once long ago as a kid worked for the Forestry Service, I don't know anything about this topic. Scary. This is one reason I like to live adjacent to but not within a forest. I look at folk who have the proverbial "cabin in the woods" then think of all the dead wood on the forest floor around their paradise that hasn't been cleaned out by fire in years and years. Big fires and explosives both give me the willies. Count me out in dealing with either.

 

This is exactly why I am moving my woods cleanup to the top of my list!

 

I think it's because even our spring and fall dry seasons aren't usually really dry...While east Tennessee was burning, I have to admit, I burned trash in a barrel as usual. In Virginia even during the annual spring dry season this is legal, because normally safe! Watched the flames die down, was about to leave hot coals at the bottom of the barrel, when a neighbor steamed up. "Good lord, don't you know an emergency ban is in effect?" I looked at the ground and realized that if a spark had blown out it could, conceivably, have smoldered long enough to ignite a dry leaf. Years go by when that won't happen.

A neighbor's house burned to the ground, years ago. V.F.D. walked away. "Nothing we can do." The grandfather of the house was feebly muttering, "The fire will spread." The fire fighters didn't (want to) realize...that was another year when, although fireworks from power lines falling into a still-wet pasture had died out, and only half of the spring-fed willow tree in the yard was even singed, flames could conceivably have spread up into drier trees uphill. That was another abnormally dry October.

Last fall we had, what, seven weeks of sunshine? Everybody loved it, but it left the Appalachian Mountains dry enough that for once the fire precautions that are standard in the Rocky Mountains started to make sense for us too. We're not accustomed to that. People don't realize that once in a while it is possible that sparks dropped into a pile of leaves will not die out, by themselves, in two seconds at most.

Most years, it rains at least once a week, usually on the weekend, and some weeks it rains every single day. The main hazard of building a bonfire right on the ground--no clearing the soil, no barrier of stones, no worries about overhanging trees--is that you'd go through a whole box of matches without getting enough flames to boil water!

Last fall, after pouring water on my well-banked, well-contained coals just to get the neighbor's blood pressure down, I reflected that we really need more awareness of the conditions that call for extra caution. One dead leaf, underneath another leaf, doesn't feel like a soaked paper towel in your hands? Western Fire Safety Rules May Apply, whether an emergency ban has been announced or not.