sfuqua wrote:We have a fire about 7 kilometers away. It blew up during my first half hour reading French tonight. It is not burning toward us, and it hasn't chased anybody out of their home yet, but my eyes are burning indoors. It is visibly smoky outside. Firefighters are making progress on it, but it stinks, and it gives us a little taste of what is coming.
It's near Cisco, if you know Milpitas, but it also jumped Coyote creek into San Jose.
I wish it would rain...
I really, really wish it would rain...
I really, really wish it would rain over the whole state...
Good luck, sfuqua.
I don’t want to assume that you don’t know what you’re doing and I don’t know your exact location and I know you have lived in a fire prone area for a while - but I’ll give you advice anyway.
1. Make sure your insurance is up to date
2. Leave early.
Hopefully the fire will lay down overnight. If it picks up early in the morning or any day soon I would head to a big shopping mall with a cinema some distance from the fire front and have a nice day out. I define leave early as 8am if the weather forecast is bad.
I hope you’ll excuse my unsolicited advice. I have worked in emergency services, including on the phones dispensing last minute advice to people who didn’t leave early. The panic in their voices has stayed with me. The lack of preparation of some/many people who have lived in fire prone areas startles me.
Driving in thick smoke is incredibly dangerous.
A shopping mall is a good way to get some clean air even if the fire stays in the forest - unless the smoke overwhelms the aircon.
How do you get warned if the fire turns in your direction in the middle of the night?