I still dont get how someone dies in one of these that is not a firefighter.
My brother's place went up a couple of years ago. He had fire breaks, so the house survived, but he nearly didn't.
The fire crested the hill, and he said it moved through faster than he could run. Luckily he had his car in the driveway, pointed down, so he could drop the hose, hop in the car, and go.
He should have been out of there the day before, but people want to save their homes, so they wait until the last minute. Sometimes they wait past the last minute.
There are two roads in and out of Paradise. 25K people trying to evacuate by two routes. Some literally died in their cars or had to abandon their cars to save their life.
They had only a short time between knowledge that they had to evacuate and the fire overrunning the town. The stories are very sad, including people who went to get friends who could not evacuate on their own, but then the group of cars got caught in the fire as they were trying to drive out of town.
There is a need for faster warnings, and perhaps cutting trees back from the sides of major roads to reduce deaths due to cars on the roads being set on fire.
Part of the problem is that embers travel up to a mile in front of the actual fire. You think you have time, and then you don’t.
Gotta sign in and prove to YouTube that you’re over 18 to see this video, but folks NEED to understand this evacuation stuff is LIFE AND DEATH.
About the 1:56 mark you’ll hear the guy talk about trying to save this one woman, but she HAD to put her makeup on, first.
She’s dead.
Burned to a crisp over her own damned vanity.
When the fire first started, it was devouring 80 football fields a minute.