Wildfire Preparedness: When Vacation Turns Into an Evacuation

By Tom Neal
Bigfoot Trails Basecamp | Independent Adventure Media

I wasn't in Maui when the fires hit.

My wife and I were somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, heading toward Greenland and Iceland, when the news started coming through about what was happening on Maui.

My wife's brother and his family were there.

They were on vacation. They had vacation clothes, a rental car and the normal stuff people take when they're going somewhere to relax for a few days. They weren't stupid. They weren't being careless. They were doing exactly what millions of people do when they go on vacation.

Then the fire changed everything.

Suddenly they weren't tourists anymore. They were people trying to figure out how to get out of a place that was becoming increasingly dangerous.

Their rental car didn't have much fuel. Getting more wasn't as simple as driving to the gas station. Communications were becoming difficult, which meant we were sitting thousands of miles away trying to find out whether they were okay and having trouble even getting through to them.

They were in Lahaina, trying to figure out what the hell they were supposed to do next.

At one point, they were preparing themselves for the possibility that they might have to get into the ocean.

Think about that for a minute.

You leave home expecting a vacation. A few hours later you're looking at the ocean as a possible escape route because the roads, fuel, communications and everything else you normally depend on may no longer be available.

That's what wildfire can do.

And that's the part of wildfire preparedness that gets missed when the conversation turns into a list of equipment.

The fire itself is obviously the immediate threat. But the fire also changes everything around it. Roads close. Smoke makes driving difficult. Power can disappear. Cell service can become unreliable, or non-existent. Fuel may be unavailable. Familiar routes may no longer be usable. People who normally know exactly where they're going suddenly have to make decisions under pressure.

Fire changes the clock.

The amount of time you have to make a good decision can disappear a hell of a lot faster than you expect.

The Fire Isn't the Only Problem

When most people picture wildfire preparedness, they picture their house.

That's important, especially if you live in an area where wildfire is a real possibility. But wildfire preparedness is bigger than protecting a building.

It's also about being able to leave.

That means knowing where you are, knowing where you're going, and having some idea what you're going to do if the first plan doesn't work.

One of the simplest things I would do now is download an offline map of the area I'm going into. Not because I'm expecting the place to burn down, but because I don't want my ability to understand where I am to depend entirely on a cell tower that may or may not still be working.

I'd also look at the roads before I need them.

Not just the road I'm planning to use, either.

Where are the other ways out? Which direction takes me toward safety? What happens if the normal route is closed? Where are the bottlenecks?

You don't need to memorize every road in the county. But if an evacuation order comes through and you're staring at your phone trying to figure out where the hell you're supposed to go, you've already waited too long to start planning.

And there's another question that sounds simple until you're standing in the driveway with smoke in the air:

What are you taking with you?

Not what would you like to take.

What are you actually taking?

Important medications. Identification. Phones and chargers. Essential medical equipment. A little food and water. Important documents. Things your pets need. Whatever else can't easily be replaced.

You don't want to make those decisions while you're watching the sky change color.

That's one of the biggest lessons I took from what happened to my wife's family.

They didn't fail because they didn't own enough emergency equipment.

They were caught in a situation they had never imagined being in.

That's different.

Don't Wait Until You Can See the Fire

One of the easiest mistakes to make with wildfire is assuming you'll know when it's time to leave because you'll be able to see the fire.

You might.

You also might not.

Smoke, wind, road closures, changing conditions and evacuation orders can change the situation long before flames are visible from where you are.

That's why alerts matter.

If you live somewhere vulnerable to wildfire, know how your local emergency alerts work. Know where evacuation information comes from. Pay attention when officials start talking about changing conditions.

And understand the difference between being told to prepare and being told to leave.

You don't have to wait until somebody physically knocks on your door to start making decisions.

If conditions are deteriorating and you know you have extra complications—children, animals, medical needs, mobility issues, limited transportation—you may need more time than the person next door.

That's not panic.

That's understanding your own situation.

A healthy person with a full tank of gas and nothing but a backpack can make decisions differently than a family with three kids, two dogs, medical equipment and one vehicle.

Your evacuation plan has to belong to your life.

And your vehicle is part of that plan.

Fuel is part of that plan too.

The rental car in Maui didn't become a problem because the family suddenly forgot how to drive. It became a problem because fuel availability was no longer something they could take for granted.

That's easy to overlook during normal life.

During an evacuation, it can become one of the things that determines whether you can leave.

Preparedness Is What You Already Decided

The more I think about Maui, the less I think about gear.

I think about decisions.

Where would I go?

Which direction would I leave?

What would I take?

What would I do if my first route was closed?

What if the power was out?

What if my phone stopped working?

What if I couldn't reach the people I was traveling with?

What if I had fifteen minutes?

What if I had five?

Those are wildfire preparedness questions.

The equipment matters, but the equipment works better when the decisions have already been made.

A go bag sitting in the closet doesn't tell you where to drive.

A full tank of gas doesn't tell you when to leave.

A phone doesn't help much if you don't know who you're trying to reach.

And a map isn't much good if you've never looked at it before the emergency.

That's why I don't think preparedness is about building some giant pile of survival gear and waiting for civilization to collapse.

It's much simpler than that.

It's knowing what problems you're likely to face and thinking through them before they're happening.

Wildfire is a good example because the window for making those decisions can get very small.

My wife's family didn't expect to spend their vacation thinking about evacuation routes, fuel, communications or whether the ocean might become their last option.

Neither would I.

That's the point.

You don't prepare because you expect your vacation to turn into a disaster.

You prepare because sometimes the world doesn't give a shit what you had planned.

And when that happens, the people who already thought through the next few decisions have something incredibly valuable:

time.

Not necessarily a lot of it.

Just enough to make a better decision.

That's what practical preparedness is about.

Not predicting exactly what will happen.

Being ready for what happens when the plan you had five minutes ago stops working.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Neal is the creator of Bigfoot Trails Basecamp, an independent adventure media project built around real-world travel, vehicles, motorcycles, outdoor adventure, racing and practical preparedness.

Tom has formal emergency-management and public-safety training, including FEMA Emergency Management Institute coursework, FEMA's Professional Development Series, Vector Solutions emergency-response training, and First Aid, CPR/AED and Wilderness First Aid training.

Bigfoot Trails Basecamp isn't about preparing for the end of the world. It's about being ready when normal life suddenly stops working.

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