Texas Wild Fires

On of the prettier places in Texas is in the middle of being burned to the ground and at least 300 homes have been destroyed with 2 deaths reported.  The Bastrop area east of Austin is/was populated by a thick forest of loblolly pines.  My first hint that something was up was looking at the radar yesterday.  I've been staring at it rather in vain for months now hoping a stray shower would appear near by.  Thing about those showers though is they always move on the radar picture.  This one didn't.  It looked like a smoke plume and sure enough was.  The second I went outside I knew there was a huge fire burning nearby.  Mrs 'hog and I were headed out to dinner and you could smell the smoke.  She said "the sky just doesn't look right".  I responded that there was a big fire somewhere near by and we'd probably see it on the news.  Oddly, by the time we had gotten home, there was nothing on the net about it.  Not until this morning were things being reported.

Here's a local article about it:

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/article/Wildfire-destroys-300-homes-near-Austin-Texas-2155810.php

Here's a link to some video I can't embed:

http://www.ksat.com/video/29081272/index.html


Here's a long loop radar picture where you can see the fire just below where is says Bastrop starting around 3PM:

Here's a local one today at around 11AM.  You can still clearly see the smoke plume just SE of Austin:

The loops will not play within the post.  You'll have to click on the image.

I haven't written about it in a while but there's a preparedness theme to this blog and the events of yesterday are a prime example of why you should always have some level of preparedness in your life.  At least 300 families are going to spend quite some time without a house.  Many more are evacuated at least temporarily.  This is a bug out scenario unless you have a bunker built on your property.  Wild fires will kill you.  You typically have high winds in these situations causing blinding smoke and fast moving flames.  If you have stores prepped in your house and it burns to the ground?  So do your preps.  This risk could be reduced by simply having some preps in a local climate controlled storage facility somewhere near by.

It pays to know what disasters you're likely to face in the area where you live.  Around San Antonio our biggest threat is flash flooding.  It's also the easiest to avoid.  Up by Bastrop you have that wild fire threat.  It's less easy to avoid but you can construct your house in a way that will beef up it's survivability.  A lot of Texas deals with tornadoes and hurricanes.  You can prep for both but if they hit your place it's likely to be destroyed.  Just some cheery stuff to think about as a huge fire burns out of control about an hour north of me.