Mounted search and rescue

["IRVIN LICHTENSTEIN" <ilichten1@verizon.net>]

The evacuation best plan is the plan you don’t have to use.  It is difficult to prevent random events, like lightning or blow downs, but you can minimize their consequences on your property.  Keeping the barriers clear of fuel, putting in larger water tanks, using fire resistive materials for buildings reduce consequences.  It is not just defending your space but keeping your space from being threatened in the first place.

 

Given that what was a 100 year event is now happening every 10 years or less (floods, fires, droughts) you should start thinking in terms of a 500 year storm.  Many housing developments with limited water sources are installing large underground tanks and filling them slowly during off peak hours from their system and providing fire

department connections for pump out and refill.  Having 30,000 gallons of water in a secure location can help.  Also, having a low flow wet down system to cover your roof will save your barn and help with smoke.  Steel will melt, and it reradiates the heat.  Concrete will spall and holds the heat.  Adding a relatively low concentration agent (1%) will stretch the water supply considerably and make it wetter.  Your community should look into obtaining large water tank trucks or surplus airport crash trucks as they are designed to operate off road and to carry as much as 3000 gallons of water, operated by one person.

 

As to evacuating—you have to leave early and stay away until it is really over.  You leave when the fire starts, not when the deputy says, “get out NOW!!!”  My horse never wanted to load when we went on a camping trip or a day ride.  Maybe it was because he was leaving home and was expecting to work 8 – 12 hours that day.  He was in the stock trailer when it rolled over one day.  Despite being in the middle of an 8 lane interstate on Memorial Day weekend at the baseball stadium exit he calmly walked down the roadway to an off ramp and waited for another trailer.  The he loaded into a much smaller, side by side ramp load that belonged to the mounted police unit and let strangers take him to a strange barn for the night.  When it was time to go home he loaded without a flinch into a third trailer.  He doesn’t mind loading, he hates not being able to unload until you let him.  And he doesn’t like the water in strange places either.

 

Irv Lichtenstein   

 

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From: msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:msar-riders-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Sabine
Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2011 11:36 PM
To: Mounted search and rescue
Subject: Re: [MSAR] Evacuation plans