Many woke up to their house on fire and their entire surroundings ablaze, with no escape.
Explosive fires engulfing entire neighborhoods in minutes.
We had reservations in Bodega Bay for 3 nights beginning Monday.
Early Monday morning about 3 am, we got Nixle evac notices. Shortly after that local police were going from door to door tell us to get out and evac.
We threw in our travel gear with our bug out bags into our Ridgeline, and tried to leave to get to Bodega Bay. We couldn’t get out of town and stayed a few hours with friends until the roads were cleared.
We talked other evacuees at the Bodega Bay hotel from the Coffee Park and other Santa Rosa areas. They got zero Nixle warnings and no cops or firemen telling them to evacuate. The smoke and/or high winds woke them up, or a neighbor woke them up. They decided to leave on their own.
Those in charge of calling evacs were apparently afraid of causing a panic and didn’t declare the emergency evacus.
If true, they caused a horrible result.
They may have killed hundreds.
Wow...out of all of this I am going to invest in a small Ham Rig with scanner capabilities and get the into/Tehcnicians License. Its only 35 questions for the FCC License (plus a bit of cash) . For the price of Baofeng radios I can get a couple. We got the mandatory evac order. My wife was there and I was in Fresno working. I could not for the life of me get any handle through the internet or telephone calls to authorities a to just where the fire was so I could judge as to its distance from my wife.
Luckily for us, the fire moved away from us and we were out of danger and did not have to face what those folks in Loma Rica, Bangor and of course the North Bay Counties, faced. But she was packed and ready to go at a second’s notice and stayed that way until I could get here some accurate information.