I am reading and thinking about this: https://www.dnr.wa.gov/publications/rp_fire_how_to_prepare_wildfire.pdf
I spent the three days of the heatwave watering everything except my grass. I watered all the plants in the early morning, got their leaves wet as well as the ground, to try to pull them through the heatwave. I think one mint plant in a basket died. But it might still have some roots and come back. I moved it under the ornamental plum.
I have been planning to have the plum trimmed, but I was grateful for the amount of shade over the three days.
The heatwave is not over in eastern Washington and people are dying in heat records in Canada.
I have an L shaped lot, a double lot, because the 1930s garage extends five feet on to the perpendicular lot that goes into the middle of the block. There is a big maple on the second lot. I quit mowing it in 2007 with the permission of the neighbors. The city doesn't seem to care. There is a ginormous wild rose with ivy in it along the road that is currently about seven feet tall, so passerbys can't really see much, unless they look through the two cars and the little trailer in the driveway. There is an apple tree and two plums and the deer leave fawns there sometimes, to rest. I put out a bucket of water in the heat and also ice sprinkled with salt. If I need salt the deer probably do too. Plus there has been a family of raccoons up in the cedar.
The site says I should trim the lower branches of trees near the house. Well, the cedar is about as far from my house as is possible in two lots. I think I will clear around the base of the electrical pole that is in the middle of the lot. I guess I have the easement related to that pole. The electrical company came and put a new pole in 2-3 years ago. It would be inconvenient to have it burning in the middle of the block. When my house was painted, the bushes and brush were cleared away from close to the house. I am studying that as well. Also some of my oxygen tanks are on the back porch and I might get the rest out of the house. Let's see, flammables. I saw a house burn down fast with oxygen tanks, propane tanks and ammunition blowing up. The fire did not jump to the nearby shed, which had more ammunition and propane and gasoline, lovely. I watched the fire after we called 911, then rushed back to the summer house two houses away and put all of our important stuff in the car. We could at least drive to the other end of the island if it all started going up in flames. Then we could wade into the water and let the stuff go if needed.
I don't think the summer is going to be great if we are blanketed with smoke. Sure looks likely at the moment. Glad I have an oxygen concentrator and a lot of books, might be keeping in the house if it gets bad....I have books, art supplies, musical instruments and I can put the comic books in numerical order, lots of yarn to knit. I can make glue on paper pasta art.
I have a go bag, but it's mostly tsunami stuff. Now I need to add fire stuff. There are only two roads, two lane roads, out of here. However, I have a boat still. I am rethinking selling it. And it's time to stock water and foods and I'd better order a whole lot more gauze and ace wraps and emergency stuff from Moore Medical. Sugar to pack in burn wounds if we don't have antibiotics. I don't think I can stock iv fluid, sigh. Bit beyond my capacity. Though I hear that my hospital has three days of supplies. I hope that isn't true. I am supposed to have three weeks ready in case we have a tsunami. The thing is, where do I put it? If we have the 9+ earthquake, will my house be standing? I tried putting bins in the deer yard lot, but the plastic degraded quickly and they leaked. Well, if the house really falls down, I probably won't need the go bag, right?
The downtown is built on fill and could liquify. Also the sand cliffs that have houses built on top, well, a good deal of that would come down. I am a bit happy that I have a house on "the wrong hill" as my ex called it. I am four blocks from the hospital. I can go help if needed. A new part of the hospital was built in the last few years, so hopefully that has seismic concerns taken in to account. My house if from 1930. We had the chimney tuck pointed when it did not fall down in the 2001 earthquake.
Yeah, well, that's what I am thinking of at 1:25 this morning....I went to sleep at 9 and woke at midnight. I get up when it's clear I just am not going right back to sleep. It's been over a month since I had a long in the night interval. But I am worrying about fires. And about preparing for fires. And about Go bags and just exactly where would I go? We are on a peninsula on a bigger peninsula, surrounded on three sides by water. The water is at about 55 degrees, so we can't swim away. The pictures from Greece of the people who made it to the ocean and didn't suffocate from smoke and then burn, whew. I don't want to sleep right now, ugh, nightmares. I also watched a program yesterday evening from Washington State DNR about forest fires. The burn scarred face of the firefighter who got out running though the flames burning and whose three partners died after the fire truck went off the road into a ravine because the smoke was too thick to see... I guess I have reason enough to not sleep for a bit tonight.
More preparing. My heat pump is set to cool only if we get over 80. Maybe I should raise that number higher....
I haven't had air conditioning most of the places I've lived. Alexandria, Virginia none. Trumansburg, NY, no. Knoxville, TN, no. Richmond, Virginia for four years of medical school, none. Portland, Oregon, residency, none. Madison, Wisconsin, nope. Alamosa, Colorado, no. My clinic here now closed, no. We opened the windows and occasionally set up a fan. The building is from the 1950s and had both great passive solar with south facing windows for the winter and great ventilation with a fan and the back door and front windows open. The only time it didn't work well was when eastern Washington was burning and we had to close it because of smoke. I feel slightly guilty to have a machine cooling my house now, but I was not thinking of cooling at all when I had it put in. I was replacing my 1979 GE propane furnace that had finally cracked the heat exchange plate.
yeah, like the NY Times says, I am feeling rather weirded out about the weather.