4758

We went 4 and a half days without power back in 2011 after Hurricane Irene, not fun. Just be glad its the summer and hopefully you have running water and a working toilet.

I got a 6500 watt portable generator after that outage, as we lost a lot of food and a bit of our sanity. ;)

4759

It figures, it’s been slowly getting better all day here in Bothell. It’s too hot to close up all the doors tonight. I don’t know if running my portable AC is smart. It probably doesn’t have much of a filter and I would just be blowing the outside air in.

4760

Run the AC in the evening, after it’s cooled off outside. Then shut it off and seal off the house. If you have decent insulation you should hopefully be okay.

4761

We do have running water thankfully. Been thinking the same about a generator, we had just thoroughly stocked up the fridge and freezer right before this hit, of course.

Windstorms and canyon winds aren’t unusual around here, but the ferocity of this one was. They’re calling it “generational” but with climate change I fear that may be optimistic… hence looking at generators and backup power. :)

4762

It’s hilarious. Or old house in Kenmore, I think we ran the AC 8-9 months out of the year. Between living on Hood Canal and having a more energy efficient home, we haven’t turned the AC on this year

@lordkosc that’s the one thing that worries me where we are. We are on a well and have septic. Both require power. The previous owner left a generator here but the one time I tried to use it, the interconnect didn’t seem to do anything. It won’t be as expensive to add a standby generator here as it was in our old place, but still not cheap.

4763

Yes, sticky icky smoke particles must be hell for bots. Sorry :(

4764

I was angry and hurt for awhile and just lost. I needed something QT3 couldn’t give me, and I don’t even know it was fair to expect that in the first place. But when I got scared, I mean freaking terrified and throwing things in the car trying to figure out where we could go and not got stuck in the freeway while doing it near another fire, I mean the wrong information was that bad… rumors about things blowing up and everything, i came here for just a minute before driving off. It was the only thing I knew to do because I can’t express that to the people that are relying on me to … figure it out. All I knew is we have gas, cars, what i think we need and a credit card, there must be hope north. My twin actually listened to our police scanners for 7-8 hours to tell me what was going on while i drove.

There was no single source for us to use to find out where the fire was, how close it was and what direction it was going. If the shelters were full, if there were other shelters… nothing. And certainly no place for me to go read hey don’t go to Springfield because they have a fire looming over them today.

The status today is my mom is back in my home with me. My little sister canceled her daycare for the week and is up north with my dad in WA coast, should be safe there. It was suggested by twin come she come in, as in fly over and help, and I told her absolutely not. COVID is still happening, our fires are not contained… at all, just holding, and if anything happens she is safe and can coordinate from afar. I also reminded her of where all my financial accounts are and once again who the beneficiaries generally are, why, and of course if this house makes it, and I don’t… sell the damn thing. The only thing anyone in my family would do with this house is lose it.

And of course, nope, not prepared for a COVID 19 2020 historic wildfire event where my mom lost everything… i mean everything. She went to the rubble today, without me… said something about having her daughter there would be a guarantee she lost it. I sent my great aunt, begged her to go so she had to like 10 minutes north and then back down just to get there. the roads are still clear. They viewed it together. Nothing left, almost unrecognizable. There is at least one person they can’t find from there… hope is not good for him.

Talent, Phoenix… I grew up there. They’re gone. I mean, I already said that but this isn’t some rural place in the middle of nowhere… it’s a kind of urban place, the hub of Southern Oregon and North CA. The regional hospital is here. I worked there and all them, my friends who half of which are evacuated, others on standby with me, they got messages from their managers that the national guard was on standby to help evacuate the hospital… the ones that can’t be moved. The ones that can, their cars.

Anyway, the Almeda , Glendower fire is "my’ fire. It didn’t help it had two name for goodness sake. It’s holding at Phoenix is the last info I have which is south. The Obenchain fire is to the NE. That one is HUGE, completely out of control and the house I moved out of in the fall is under be ready status from that fire. that is also the fire where my friend took these pictures below… from their yard.

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This one too

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They were supposed to be evacuated. He stayed to save their missing cat and because, well he’s who he is. I am happy report he and the cat are out of there.

My closest friend after my sister’s mom and dad lost their homes to a wild fire about a year ago. Oregon had a fire at the same time as the Paradise fire, but ours got a lot less coverage because I think we lost a handful of structures, not in town. I am getting advice from her now how to deal with mom. I don’t know how to… do this.

And again, we’re not out of the woods, just not in imminent danger at the moment.

I don’t need anything from anybody right now other than to be allowed to just be… weak. I feel helpless. And I don’t see how our little region can recover from this if it just stopped right now, which it’s not.

4765

You be weak, vent anger or frustration, cry, yell, whatever you need to do, Nesrie. I’m just so glad you’re okay for now.

4766

This.

4767

DYI smoke filter. Tape a MERV 13 or FPR 10 AC filter to a box fan and it supposedly will filter out the smoke.

Of course Home Depot is getting cleared out of the filters. There was a crowd going through what was left, but I found some odd shaped ones that I can tape to a box fan.

4768

I’m probably over sharing but… 11:30 is mom’s place. It just feels right to show the devastation I guess. The big road yous see the most often is I-5, the one that goes all the way up and down the West Coast.

The rumors are true… I see a building or two in there. Mom could not see that from the ground, she said.

Update on the fire, the news is clarifying that the fire is not really… still there. They don’t label it contained because gas lines, power lines, other dangers, flare-ups and new fires pop up in the same area. The idea of containment is less ideal within cities than it is in the middle of forests where there are not, say, exposed gas lines.

Side note on the box fan, I did that a couple of years ago. It works. It’s also… horrific how dark it gets especially if your filter is larger than the fan. it took just a couple of days to turn mine almost black.

4769

Damn, crazy, there really isn’t anything left. It’s so weird to see that amount of devastation and then some trees standing just fine right beside it. Fires are scary things.

4770

We have this thing called The Greenway, technically it’s called the Bear Creek Greenway. It’s essentially a paved trail that is used to walk and bike that travels all the way from Ashland, the start of the Almeda fire, to Central Point, the area where the largest shelter was set-up. I don’t fully understand how this happens… but it sounds like it was an artery for the fire. Like the fire somehow used this path combined with the wind to quickly travel forth, decimate Talent and Phoenix and make it to the most southern part of Medford.

If the path wasn’t there, it would just be vegetation or maybe something else I guess. Elderly couples,often retirees, volunteer to walk these paths now and then to keep an eye on things and discourage things from happening since much of the path you can’t see from the roads due to vegetation… My twin listened to our scanners for gosh it seemed like almost 20 hours, and they think that was part of the problem. i am not sure how pavement would cause more problems since it doesn’t burn but if you follow the fire path, The Greenway is rarely far from it. She said there is discussions about addressing that and that our governor, Kate whom I have spoken not highly about before, released 150 page report or something on how to work on problems in the future that some other expert described as using tweezers to mow a lawn.

The reality is, like a lot of CA and parts of WA, we haven’t seen water, rain in almost 90 days. We’re bone dry, in triple digits with wind. We’ve also been in a severe or extreme drought status year after year after year, and we get one good year and suddenly there is celebration like we’re out of the drought… except from what I was taught, at school, that’s not how getting out of a drought works.

COVID19 - Drought - High Winds - Crews Sent to CA - and apparently no real, plan … and we get this.

After the helicopter view it looks like we’re mostly okay with this fire, not the other one, so maybe I can sleep a little. Plan tomorrow is to figure out how to get mom’s title, talk her insurance and register her for these things that require… proof of ownership to use, something that went up in flames but should be digitally stored somewhere. I thought the trailers were with the DMV, but friends are telling me that stopped doing that years ago. I also believe her insurance should have a copy.

Thank god mom never stopped paying her insurance. She even upped it last year because around here just keep going up.

4771

I"m really super relieved to hear your house is ok and you’re back in it with your family Nesrie. What a tormenting few days and now you get to help your mom go through the laborious process of applying for insurance and rebuilding. That’s super good news on the insurance front. Hopefully they won’t try to weasel out of it or try to lowball the value. Was that a mobile home park? If so, and they try to tell you to go and get one, delivery alone on those are $5-8K so don’t let them get out of that.If it wasn’t a mobile home, then it should be a lot easier.

Good luck with the next few days & vent / say whatever you want here. We’re here for you.

4772

God best of luck to you all.

4773

It was a mobile home park. I don’t think we’re even close to a tally, but I’d say we lost at least 4 maybe 5 entire parks here. Mom had insurance but she will not be rebuilding. The plan was for her to move in here, with me because she’s not… well. Now I was having a hard time getting her to accept that invitation, but for God only knows what reason, she brought all her pictures and slides, like 40 years of stuff, over here last week… and she picked out her paint for her room and painted a few weeks ago. I was expecting to have this sot of moving in process to last through the end of the year. Now she’s just… here. The good news is, I mostly planned for it but because she wasn’t ready to commit, i wasn’t move in ready yet.

Also didn’t plan on her moving in with nothing, but she’s a lot better off than her peers. Her daughters have planned for her to move in with this daughter. In fact the other daughter with a stable job talked about contributing to my household to help ease up on expenses. It’s just… so much at once.

And she’s a raging alcoholic, not like the nice kind you hear about in recovery, like the 6 glasses a night until she is shifts from an angry to a depressive drunk in the span of about an hour or two. But… I knew that before i made arrangements to have her here.

I am not a betting woman because i know math, but my bigger fear now is when she gets that money from her insurance it will go two places, a lot of alcohol, my lil sister, and if I’m lucky, that IRS to get rid of that problem. Maybe she hire someone to deal with that IRS problem too because I am not a tax expert, like at all. I use software to do mine, don’t really know the ins and outs of owing a ton of money to them… nor do I want to know.

Her moving in like this might just save her life… but moving in with nothing, it’s hard pill for someone who should never ever have access to pills.

4774

Jesus Christ, according to the AP over 500,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in Oregon - that’s over 10% of the state’s population.

4775

We all laughed at this in the 80s, but I’d kill for some of Perri-Air right now

4776

I hope you take this in the best way possible (grim determination rather than a fit of depression): the real struggle starts now.

4777

I did not take it the wrong way at all.

Air quality is toxic, the smoke feels like it’s burning my eyes. The fire is still not contain, still too dangerous to go in the area, the entire valley is still on the be ready to flee status, basically, and the other large fire is now a mile from the city where I used to live in the fall… and hear i am not having gone downstairs yet even though I know she got her morning smoke on and is figuring out the coffee machine I only have for guests because my WIFI cameras tell me so. I just don’t want to deal with this now but… we’re going to get this done.

And holy shit, it’s Friday. The week is gone. I can scarcely believe it. It feels like we fled yesterday, and that was two days ago.