Credit Nancy Kerns
I am sure this is tiresome, having me write one of these every year, but it seems to come up frequently here in northern California. We have a fire burning close by, and neighborhood after neighborhood has been evacuated today as the fire has progressed, close and closer to my house. The phone has been screeching with emergency alerts and updates from the Watch Duty app—a tool that has become the most critical and timely source of information about where the fire is, what resources have been deployed to fight it, and what zones people need to evacuate from.
First my sister’s boyfriend got evacuated, and he brought his two small dogs and cat to my sister’s house. My sister called me with this news, and I managed to tell her then that if she got evacuated, she should head to my house; it’s farther from where the fire started. By the time her neighborhood got evacuated, neither our cell phones nor text messages were working, but since I had recently put the Watch Duty app on her phone, she got word of the mandatory order and packed up her own dogs and essentials and she and her boyfriend caravanned to my house.
When she arrived, I was busy packing up my own essentials, just in case the fire spreads even more. It went from 10 acres at 11 am to 2,200 as I write this at 6 pm. My computer, back up drives, and cameras are in a plastic container by the door. The dogs’ gear is in a bag, also by the door. We were planning to leave for a three day camping trip tomorrow, so I had already loaded my car with a tent, sleeping bags, a cooler, and so on— but we’ll have to see what tomorrow brings. If my neighborhood gets evacuated, well, then we will go camping! And my sister and her boyfriend will head for our sister-in-law’s home 60 miles away.
We’ve been through this so many times in the past eight or so years, that it’s more or less automatic: Make sure the cars are full of gas. Plug the cell phones in while we still have power. Charge the cell phone battery backups. Fill a cooler with ice in case the power goes out and we have to put all our refrigerated food in coolers. Pack the car with tablets and a “go-bag” of toiletries, medicines, and enough clothing for a few days. Dog leashes and harnesses and food and medicines.
These sites have good information about getting ready to evacuate from a disaster. Even if you don’t have a disaster looming on the horizon, review the information so you can have some idea of what you might need to do if a tornado, hurricane, flood, fires, landslide, earthquake, or whatever might make you have to leave home.
https://www.ready.gov/plan
https://www.ready.gov/evacuation
This site, put together by animal rescue volunteers in my county, has excellent information about having to evacuate with animals:
https://www.nvadg.org/how-to-be-ready-to-evacuate-with-pets/
