Posted on 09/01/2023 6:11:29 PM PDT by Libloather
This goes way back, when I was a teen..
We were driving from Buffalo to Albuquerque and I remember staying in Springfield MO. So we must have driven through the panhandle. It’s the most direct route and that is the only one my parents would have taken.
That explains the terrain then. Y’All should have taken the scenic route via Texarkanna to El Paso🤠
https://www.distance-cities.com/distance-texarkana-tx-to-el-paso-tx
After 4 days of sitting in a car, we were more than ready to GET THERE.
Not another 5 minutes more than we had to.
Maybe some day.....I have good friends who live in Houston.
Sorry you went through that. It’s a tough deal.
That’s another hazard I’d forgotten. Falling into one of those underground fires is a bad deal, to say the least. The ground on top seems fine and suddenly you are up to your waste in hot coals.
It’s great you are chipping and creating defensible space. It’s the primary reason we survived our fire. However, we had 80 MPH winds and the stuff we chipped in place away from the structures was lighting off and flying by like tracer rounds. The road on the other part of the ranch they had coated with chips burned for a week, despite my efforts.
Chips are great in that you have rearranged the fuel, but depending where they end up, they can be a problem though far less of a problem than standing material. Good work.
It’s funny how an experience like yours changes your perspective, isn’t it? If you are anything like me, you now look at structures and almost immediately assess their survivability or defensibleness against fire. I look at certain neighborhoods in fear and certain roadways as scary or impossible passages were there a fire.
Glad you are well and pray you are never tested like that again.
Thanks for your story.
The short answer is yes and yes...
Yes, I have stood in the middle of Oklahoma while growing up, way more than 100 acres. We did it while chasing storms while I was at OU in 1971, way before it became trendy.
Yes we evacuated Harbison Canyon during the Cedar fire in San Diego and drove through flames, embers and smoke. We watched people with livestock trailers drive through fences to get to I-8 because the exits were jammed. It was one of the biggest wildfires there. We lost our place in that fire.
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