I have no background in forest management but having spent my entire life in the Pacific Northwest, I have found we are both blessed and cursed with its vast forests. Northern California especially has always had a tremendous fire load in dry summer months and we were instructed as kids to be extremely careful not to even cause a spark at those times. We all had fire extinguishment tools of some kind in our vehicles. My own father nearly lost his home to an 80,000 acre forest fire once in Mendocino County. On a different fire near his home a California Dept of Forestry plane crashed, killing the pilot.
The recent Camp Fire of Butte County attests to the threat Northern Californians have to adjust to on a daily basis. It also attests to the fact that we need to do more to get ready. Unfortunately, this type of disaster is like the Cascadia seismic event, none of us will know where we will be when all of a sudden the whole place turns into an instant hell. Finding myself in conditions nearly as bad as the Camp Fire on more than one occasion, I unfortunately know the manner in which those poor people died.
With the exception of marine forests, we have long known this disaster becomes a yearly threat to the Pacific Northwest. Every year multiple Communities must personally deal with it. Therefore, it is time we review our Civil Defense efforts and take a lesson from our English allies during the WWII Battle for Britain, who survived the bombs and fires by going underground. I submit public and private underground fire shelters should be common place in the Pacific Northwest, especially Northern California.
I don’t believe it would be difficult for a private citizen to make their own emergency fire shelter. I suspect all it would require is an emergency equipped cargo container that was somehow covered in say 18 inches of dirt and a means to fire protect the access and egress to it, (I have a suggestion on how to do that). Neighbors could even build them together for their combined families emergency use. They could perhaps be counted on as emergency housing for a little while until a more secure habitation can be arranged if a home is lost.
Once again, public and private emergency fire shelters should be common place in our beautiful yet dangerous Pacific Northwest and they should be another option for local emergency management use. Someone in the Pacific Northwest will have to run from wildfire this year, let us give them someplace to go.