Archive for September, 2009

The wildfires which threatened our valley earlier this week (see yesterday’s blog) led me once again to perform a mental exercise which I revisit whenever such an emergency makes the news. The phrase “evacuation notice” in alerts or radio reports, even if it is not directed at my immediate neighborhood, gets the wheels turning in my head. If I truly only had half an hour to gather myself, my loved ones and my valuables before leaving my home with the possibility that it and everything in it would be gone when I returned, what would I choose to take with me?

Such thoughts never entered my mind until we were living in the Puget Sound area and we experienced a few moderate earthquakes. These weren’t anything close to “the Big One” which geologists say could strike the region at any time (as ones have in the past), but they were large enough to spark efforts by emergency planners, school officials and the like to encourage individuals and families to prepare for large-scale disasters when outside help would be unavailable for days and disruptions in basic services could be expected. We were encouraged to develop communication plans, escape routes and stores of food and water and other supplies, and pull together and safely store important documents and the like. Our family, spurred on by the girls and the messages they were getting at school, did have a few discussions about where we would go and what we would do in a few different scenarios, but I will admit that we didn’t go the full route of having bins of supplies and gallons of water stored away.

About eight years ago, when we moved to the dry side of the Cascade Mountains and into wildfire territory, I had cause to ponder more often what I might do under threat of an emergency evacuation. Virtually every summer there were multi-thousand-acre fires that burned through forest-, range- and croplands in our region, often putting hundreds of homeowners under mandatory evacuation orders to clear out until the danger was past. A Level Three alert (“Ready”) meant fire could reach your property and you should make plans to get out. Level Two (“Set”) equated to “load your vehicles and prepare to leave,” and Level One (“Go”) was an immediate order to get out — no ifs, ands or buts. One could exist under levels two or three for several days, depending on winds, humidity and temperature, giving time to transport livestock out of the area and pull things together. Then again, the levels could shift rapidly or jump immediately to mandatory evacuation.

While our home was in the midst of a well-established development in East Wenatchee, nevertheless it sat just down slope from dryland wheatfields and sagebrush and scrublands — always very dry after our long, hot summer days. Twice in the six years we lived there fires burned through those areas, turning the sky a glowing, threatening orange at night. Luckily, the winds pushed the flames east from us, but those were tense days as we watched helicopters sweep low over our home to fill their tanks with water from the Columbia River to the west and then return to drop their loads a mile or two away. Everyone was on alert; we listened to forecasts intently and observed every tiny shift of wind. I know I wasn’t alone in filling my head with lists of what I would grab and throw in the car if we were put under notice to evacuate. Photo albums, Christmas ornaments made by the girls or gathered on our travels, jewelry, the computer, file drawers of papers and documents, family heirlooms or special treasures from abroad . . . all of these filled my head and vied for space as I mentally filled my minivan (with scarcely a thought for clothes or toiletries).

How about you? Ever thought about what you would grab if you had only a short time before leaving your worldly goods behind or, God forbid, actually ever had to make such choices? If you could, what would you save?

– Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader