Model Railway Forum

I have had an Interesting couple of days. Oz at the moment is burning down. We found ourselves in the path of a major fire, travelling about 30 kms an hour. Temperature for the day was 45 and strong winds, so a lot of fuel to burn. Had to evacuate quickly. My layout is not portable, so grabbed as many locos I could fit and the NCE controller plus a few books. But which ones to take. Soon affirmed which are my best locos. Fortunately, a wind change blew the fire NW rather than NE, so it missed us by about 5 Kms
Now fires are unlikely in Blighty but floods are pretty good

What would you take if you had to run. The exercise is worthwhile

Fortunately most of my stuff is in an upstairs room, so a flood would not be so catastrophic, but fire is another matter altogether.

We are heartbroken to hear of the terrible events in South East Australia, the loss of property is terrible enough, but people are dying, and there is nothing they can do about it.

In answer, I guess I would try and rescue my wife, my laptop and important personal documents first.

Same here. Wife, dog and documents.

We had a situation where we had to abandon our house due to fire. In 1976, even when things were more organized with most landowners keeping their land down, and the forestry at the end of the mountain having firebreaks was not enough to prevent the whole of the end of the mountain going on fire. I was living below the mountain and the fire happened just before to just after we had a house move to a new (Old) pair of cottages (One was inhabitable though we couldn't use the 1920's to 30's electrics as they were condemned when the electricity man saw the state they were in).
I was four at this time. I remember my Dad couldn't believe it. Trees were exploding and shooting a good 30 to 40 feet into the air. My parents lifted me up so I could watch it from the first house upstairs windows.
We moved, and the fire had spread downwards as well and came into the field above our property. Our property was almost completely overgrown and was full of mature trees, mostly elm trees (Which the elms died during dutch elm disease).
Luckily, that is as far as it got, but my Dad realized that it was not a good plan to have a derelect thatched cottage ajoining the cottage we occupied, so he took the corrigated iron sheets off the roof, then took the thatch roof off, and took down the roof parts of the building. The cottages were both the same age but the one we lived in had been done up around the 1920's and was beautiful. It had light blue Pembrokeshire slate and lovely metal windows with single pane glass, and the panes on the outer cornners had lead crisscrossing on the outside of the panes. There were also beautiful ornamental shutters.
While my dad was partly dissassembling the derelect cottage to make it not just fire safe, but the condition was... Well. He had to take down most of the front wall because the wooden beam lintels were not safe and we didn't have the funds to replace them. While doing this, we happened to find a cats skull in the lintel and one of my mothers friends was an archeologist. My dad mentioned it, and he knew why it was there. He said it was a costom in Wales that dissapeared by the 11 centuary and they would do this to ward off evil spirits. Converting to Christianity meant that it was no longer needed.

Now getting back to the point. In 1986, we moved on top of the mountain. A couple of years ago, we saw a lot of smoke from a fire. We knew that for some time the forestry had had new private ownership so the fire breaks had gone. The trees and shrubbery/brambles etc had gone wild. The owners of certain properties around us had left their land overgrown (They are entitled to) and so, there was a perfect line of overgrown wild tinder with no fire breaks. Add to this, I noticed that the water pressure in our taps had been low for a while, so there was no chance to defend ourselves if the fire spread. We took a decision to abandon our property. Our elderly neighbour at the bottom knew about it, and she is one who spreads news to everyone regardless of what it is! But as the ones who were directly at risk knew if they were home.
We then packed the car. Took the obvious like tents and a sleeping bag, but it is surprizing what we considered as valuable to us, as when we got back home late at night after driving around Wales and found the fire had been controlled, we unpacked. We laughed. Both my Mum and I were saying "What did you bring that for?"
It was a real eye opener to what we considered important to us. If there had been room I would have taken one bicycle, but the car was full!

It is aweful for all the destruction caused by fire. Homes lost, dreams shattered. It is very difficult to restart after one hits disaster. I am glad that it missed your place.
I have heard that many had been praying for rain, but I hope the rain to extinguish the fires does not cause floods.

One of the things I would grab is my NAS (Network Attached Storage for you non- computer buffs). A box a few inches square which contains copies of all my photos both digital and scanned paper ones, personal videos, all of my music digitized from CDs, tapes and vinyl, and all my digital documents backed up from my PC. I don't trust "Cloud" storage.

teedoubleudee wrote: ↑Tue Jan 07, 2020 12:45 pm One of the things I would grab is my NAS (Network Attached Storage for you non- computer buffs). A box a few inches square which contains copies of all my photos both digital and scanned paper ones, personal videos, all of my music digitized from CDs, tapes and vinyl, and all my digital documents backed up from my PC. I don't trust "Cloud" storage.

Absolutely the same. The NAS would be the first thing as everything is on there. Then the dogs.....
There was something else - Oh yes, my wife

I live on a hill. Floods unlikely and its too wet to get excited by wildfires.

I live in a dip on the top of a hill. We have nearly been flooded a couple of times.

Dog, motorcycle, all my Cure and Cult records. The wife can find her own way out!

Bandit Mick wrote: ↑Tue Jan 07, 2020 6:43 pm Dog, motorcycle, all my Cure and Cult records. The wife can find her own way out!

You just got me into trouble - I laughed so loudly SWMBO came to see what the fuss was about