Unbelievable how bad this fire season (and last year's) has been here in California. It appears that we have entered a time in which the fire season has become year round, but candidly, right now is and was "fire season" here even in past decades. (I grew up on an orange grove that was threatened by and survived 3 firestorms, and my Dad was a 33 year veteran of a large fire department in which he had many wildland fire deployments.)
A year ago, I attended a 2 day Defensible Space Advisers Training seminar, which changed my perspective considerably. Not least was a new understanding of the concept not only on one's own property, but on the access roads fire personnel and equipment will need to use to defend one's property and neighborhood. (Of course, fire insurance premiums are also implicated in the decision to do this work.) Suffice it to say that there is a "triage" checklist (they don't call it that) being assessed just ahead of an advancing fire, in which the defensibility of one's property and safety of firefighters will determine whether fire resources will be deployed to make a stand at one's house. So, you better have done your work.
Consequently, my defensible space work on ~2.5 of my 6.4 acres has displaced almost all other work on my house since about February. Next Wednesday, I have a 16" chipper reserved to finish (I burned piles until close of burning season in spring and had one chipping day in July already). I can't wait to get those combustible piles of slash and forest debris gone! The amount of work to do this has been sobering. I'm too old to again be in trees with chainsaws, spending days limbing and removing fuel and/or bucking up wood. (I probably have 7 cords of firewood now, not including the couple I've given away.) Point is that there is a LOT of work to be done to improve the survivability of one's home, most don't have the resources, and it's not even close to being a guarantee that my house will survive a firestorm.
Talk about an age of fear! I don't ever want to work this hard again at something as dangerous to a 66 year old as this year has required. And I sure as hell don't want to lose the house and property if the place goes up in flames anyway. Keeping in mind that "there but for the grace of God go I" -- NO DOUBT that many in this horrendous "Camp" Fire and other fires have worked as hard and expended as much in resources as I have and still lost it all. God have MERCY on them, please!
EDIT to add: As the news agencies begin to report what they can get in to see after dawn today, a mere 24 hrs. since this fire started, I fear that they will be documenting something horrendous in terms of entrapment and loss of life, that the property loss may be dwarfed by that. Hope I'm wrong, but reports from late last night portend something terrible.
