It’s Fire Season; What do you do?
I was doing a show this past weekend and we were all told that there was extreme fire danger from the weather coming in. Hot dry conditions and a cooling system with high winds preceding it would create the prefect situation and yep; it happened. You can probably guess I live in WA state around Spokane but we are not yet in an evacuation zone. It is a few blocks away, close enough that my husband and I left early on Saturday to pack a go bag and make sure we had our cats in one room.
How do you prepare for something like this? What do you do to make sure everything that matters is safe? What is really important to matter? When it came down to it, I was surprised by how much and how little it really was. Documents were important; birth certificates, marriage licenses, social security cards and wills are important and the first thing we grabbed. A change of clothes was packed and since I had time, I went for the jewelry box and grabbed what was special there. The most time consuming was gathering the crap for the pets because we had the time to do so. Food, kitty litter and cages but finding places to go with all of them is one of the most difficult things to solve.
Within a half hour we had 4 offers of places to go but; it’s the cats. One cat might be manageable but 4? things get a bit sticky. We are lucky, we still have options and while it might be some distance to get there; we can take the murder needle furballs there. With this situation it brings up an interesting question; how fast can you prepare for a fire? In a natural disaster, how had would you be hit? Driving home I discovered holes in my protection; my inventory might need more insurance coverage than what I have. There is also all of my art materials and equipment that would need replacing, what kind of coverage would I need? How do I prove what I had and it’s worth to replace? I will be making a video of all that is in my studio, having my husband open drawers and doors. At this point, it is the best I can do.
I took a video of the art we have collected on the first floor but not in the basement portion of the house yet. It doesn’t cover other special things that matter. As I write all of this, I am aware that I am getting ready to leave in 36 hours. If I take things with me and I get in a catastrophic accident on the road; I might loose those things anyway. It illustrates that life is a crapshoot and you need to decide what choice brings the smallest risk. Some people say that fire safes are a good place to leave their documents but if you have a basement; it might be weeks to months before you can actually get clearance to clear the site and find your safe. You are running a risk that no one has actually scavenged it when no one was looking and, you won’t find out how good the safe was during all of that time. You also won’t have access to those documents until then.
I don’t have any good answers but sometimes questions are a good beginning. For now, we are all safe and while Rudy is pissed off and threatening to shred my clothes; he is safe in the house. Pray for those who are in the evacuation zone or who know they have lost everything. Give when you can to the calls you can respond to and hold you family, furry or not. I am grateful to the first responders and the out of state agencies that are here working on our communities behalf. I pray that we all see the other end of this with out any loss of life, and are able to make things whole again.