Sustainable Community Living

I’ve been telling Theo since the rains stopped that I have a funny feeling we are going to get a serious fire this year.  Well it was yesterday!  Normally, we would smell the smoke, but this fire started high on the ridge across the creek from us.  So we were only alerted by the first fire truck.  The winds quickly spread the flames in the timber and a CDF spotter plane was in the air over our heads within minutes as more fire trucks, water tankers and bull dozers passed our dirt road on the way up.   At first we thought they might contain it and we settled down a bit.  Then we realized that the winds were causing more of a problem and as we saw the first of two CDF Bombers make approach runs we knew we should think of packing.

But how do you start packing so many animals?   What about our bees who 2/3 of them were out foraging.  How could we catch all those chickens who were now up in the upper field this time of day.  Some realities really set in.  We have been planning for fire design when we build a new house on the community, but this is a rental and it is pretty defense-less against fire.  Our new home will be designed into a mountain slope, with very little structure exposed.  Plus we would have cleared at least a 1000′ away from it and the barns.  Not too mention on-site fire fighting equipment and tons of water catchment.  However none this does us any good here as we watch a CDF Helicopter join the fight.

Thankfully, these amazing people with 3 planes, a Chopper, 2 bulldozers, 7 water tankers and 28 fire trucks put out the fire by nightfall.  It seems a down power line sparked the whole mess.  However, this brings up a huge questions.  In the years to come, will we still be able to rely on such machine power and the thousands of gallons of fuel that were used to fight this fire?  What will be do in the future?  How do we start to prepare a community for such an event?