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BY: Troop Emonds
troop.dragonslayers@yahoo.com
EXPECT TO BE BURNED OVER, POSITION/TRAIN TO SURVIVE
WILDFIRE STORM SURVIVAL IN A TIME OF HARD CLIMATE CHANGE
Climate Change has nullified, in many cases, effectiveness in first responders’ ability to stop fast moving fire storms from taking out towns and individual homesteads, set in wild fuels.
Fire protection people can no longer do it alone. Just too many homes and too many towns built in the fuels. Way too few fire trucks; too few fire-fighters, and too dramatic a change in red flag drought, and high wind, wildfire conditions. When California alone loses 18,000, 20,000 and 24,000 homes in on-going years to fire storms, and other states endure multiple thousands more homes lost each year, that should stand as evidence, that we have to change what we are doing. We have had quite a few warning orders that we have got to change.
We need the energy mass and physical might of the people who live in the fuels to understand, where they live, and then convert themselves into a resource to contribute, speed, readiness, & power to fire agencies, & their ability to be effective at stopping the loss.
Survival must be earned, and those that live in the fuels must begin to look at the world in a way, where they start assuming responsibility for their own survival.
Fire Agencies do fine on easy fires, but are flat not of much use for really strong wildfire storms, that start close to critical sites. Fire Agencies can’t be of much help unless the people who live in the fuels prepare their immediate area to be a Savanna of managed fuels.
What we are talking about is a simple, standard, easy to recognize, “Universal Wildfire Survival Blueprint”. A series of three circular control lines around what you want to protect. It is a cauldron. Engineered to safely contain an intentional burn off of light fuels to get rid of all organic, stored calories inside the circular control lines.
The first circular control line goes around the foundation or what you want to protect. A six to ten foot patio all around the lone structure. It is concrete, flagstone, pavers, asphalt, or even crushed rock atop plastic sheeting. Go out another 100’, put in another permanent, meandering, circular control line 2-3 feet wide, completely around the home. Then go another 100’ out and put in the third dragon ring. Best to asphalt these to cut down on maintenance work.
Next Thin all trees inside the Dragon Rings so straightest and best leave trees are 25” between tree crowns, not tree trunks. Then prune all ladder fuels off leave trees up ten or twelve feet high. OK, your heavy fuels are spaced away from each other and your aerial fuels are separated from the ground fuels, and your ground fuels are separated from each other and Dragon rings set up the perfect scenario to be able to control a burn off of all ground fuels if the wind and the wildfire are coming from any direction.
A simple plastic training and remember tool, called a DRAGON WIZZ WHEEL is used to show the trainer fire fighter or the trained homeowner where exactly to ignite the fire along the dragon rings in order to have the just ignited fire always blow into the Dragon Rings and go out so that the flame lengths always stay small and under your control. The wind is you ally here and no matter how high the drought codes are or how strong the winds, by using the Dragon Wizz Wheel as your remember guide you can always control the fire to remove all the calories that the on-coming wildfire needs to destroy your home.
When it becomes obvious a Mega fire is coming too fast, and suppression will not work, Time is saved, and black space can be instantly formed to hopefully save the structure.
This, “Universal Wildfire Survival Blueprint”, gives first responders an option to revert to save homes and towns and themselves, when they suddenly realize they don’t know as much as they thought they did, and just have to run for it, like everyone else who does not know what else to do. If the Fire Agencies cannot adopt and adapt to a higher and well-prepared technique for Survival, then the Interface dweller who really did want to become wildfire adapted, well then, the interface dwellers will have to, alone, to save themselves.
We simply cannot continue to rely on WACK-A-MOLE-Suppression. There has to be an immediate option to revert to when suppression will fail.
For towns, the two outer Dragon Rings need to be 4-5’ wide, asphalted with space between them 500 to 600 feet wide. Ground out beyond that thinned and pruned with plan to burn that out as far as you can before firestorm arrives.
THE DRAGON WIZZ WHEEL, LAYS OUT THE BLUEPRINT & SHOWS ALL THAT IS NEEDED
A Dragon Wizz Wheel is a simple 7”X 8” plastic base board. The back of the bottom board; gives all specific suggestions, as to how to convert any vegetation type into a savanna or park like area surrounding what is to be protected. It also lays out, where the 3 circular control lines, (Dragon Rings), are to be set in. A rivet attaches a clear plastic disk to the baseboard, the disk swivels. The clear disk has a wind arrow on it. Two semi-circles, of small flames are attached to the wind arrow, this spins on a rivet. The flames attached to the wind arrow, always stay just in front of the Dragon Rings. The land owner shapes the vegetation so that the aerial fuels are separated from ground fuel, and ground fuels are separated from each other by those Dragon Rings. In event of the firestorm heading toward the home or town. The user stands in front of the critical site. Lays the little Wizz Wheel on the horizontal. Orients the disk, so the wind arrow is in harmony with the wind direction on site. The semi- circles connected to the wind arrow shows the user, exactly, where to lay strips of fire from a drip torch or a self-igniting propane torch in front of the Dragon Rings. The user always remains in control the flame lengths; by controlling the amount of light fuels one ignites. No matter how strong the conditions are, black-lining of the Dragon Rings always remain under the user’s control. This is not a prescribed burn or a back-burn. It is merely black-lining, or systematically strengthening fire line. This is the most basic fundamental, in fighting fire, or in this case mitigating the power of a firestorm. Fire fighters have not been trained with this scheme. Just like home owners who live in the fuels; fire fighters are in the same place as home owners. Both groups need to be trained with fire in hand to have confidence to do it.
Training aid showing a home in natural unmanaged forest fuels
raining Aid Showing the forming of a “Universal Wildfire Survival Blueprint”
Dragon Wizz Wheel, shows wind arrow with attached red dots depicting, where the user lays strips of semi-circles of fire along inside of circular Dragon Rings. This is called BLACK-LINEING fire lines. You just keep stripping fire, always in control of flame length size, until entire area inside the entire cauldron in BLACK. This is done, just before firestorm arrives. Enough black space is established, so fire storm flames should lick up at a diagonal, and around structure. If storm is close and time allows, more black can be formed by laying out another semi-circle of flame outside of the cauldron. The oncoming firestorm can pull flames toward firestorm in its sucking need to take in oxygen; in its mechanics of destruction to spread toward critical site. This is an emergency procedure, but straw can be spread around cauldron to learn and practice the procedure when there are wind conditions, but not actual red flag emergency times. This should be done with local fire department so they too can learn the procedure.
The standard formula is four fire engines per structure to try and defend it from on coming low grade fire. This way if all structures and towns set in wild fuels were set up like this with Universal blueprint each fire engine could dispatch members of each crew to treat many homes and thus save the interface people who wanted to survive and not contribute to Darwin’s Theory of Survival of the fittest.
How many more thousands of homes lost will it take for the fire agencies to connect the dots? The trick is to convert the fuels to light fuels, then fire off those fuel just before the arrival of the fire storm.
In many places concrete homes with concrete roofs and metal roofs could not survive the long heat holding ability of heavy fuels. Fire came through broke windows and fire got inside and burned the structures from the inside out.
Moral of the story; encourage education and homeowner fire management. Practical doing and participating in, do-it-yourself survival is now needed. Remember traditional Fire people do not know about this method yet. Everyone needs to understand the basics, in order to help the society, as a whole to become wildfire adapted. Fire agencies have not been able to connect the dots to figure out where we need to go to end the loss.
Also, Modern advances in wildfire tools make each fire-fighter 3 times safer, more versatile/responsive, and effective on fires. These new tools provide the compactness, and breakdown versatility to allow mobilized troops to stow their tools in travel bags or fire packs, so they are always armed and able to go directly on to the line or clear ground to deploy fire shelters. These need to become the new standard,
Dragonslayers needs to build a modern CNC, “National Wildfire Manufacturing Center”, to arm Americans with these new, more effective fire tools, and start selling them to different countries. The same facility can be used to train private citizens and fire departments, all federal, state, and locals; if actual fire in hand, how to actually become a fire adapted society. Presently no one has the confidence and the right combination of military use of fire, and mitigation concepts to offer what to do; to actually survive the ever more dangerous firestorms. The Gov’t is wasting million-billions giving to universities to try and STUDY to problem. Let’s do something! It is infuriating when no one supposedly experts can’t see what has to be done. We have got to connect the dots and fire seasons just being a place to earn overtime. We have actually got to figure out and do something about the future losses.
Donate to www.dragonslayers.com money to build factory and fire school. Can’t do that? get politicians to grant money to Dragonslayers to do something that actually works to eliminate the losses; that keep coming from an inability to anything effective. Please help America and the fire countries of the world. Thinning and pruning is a start, but that is only the base start. Everyone needs to be trained how to black-line, circular Dragon Rings around a pre-set-in, Universal, Survival, BLUEPRINT, that everyone in the society understands how to use for their own survival. Do we have to lose another million homes before some expert sees this??????
One final survival suggestion:
Buy an old Commercial Van at a junkyard, that is worthless to drive.
Cut a round 3 foot hole through the roof. Line that sharp edge with an old garden hose. Use construction glue in a squeeze tube to secure it in place, forever.
Hire a construction company to dig in a flat hole about 3 to 4 feet deep. Put the van in the hole.
Cover the entire van with that insulation foam that sprays on. Cover that with particle board as best you can. Then have the entire thing covered up with dirt. Have at least two feet of dirt, deep, around the top of the dome you have created.
The dirt piled up around the van will create a small little hill blended into the terrain. Put a step ladder down the hole then fashion a wooden hatch cover with a few inches of dirt atop the hatch cover. That, can be slid shut over your hose lined entry hole as you and other members of the family have climbed down step ladder into the empty van.
his is a survival shelter meant to hunker in for a short time. Have some canteens of water, some battery lanterns, and maybe a filled back pack water pump for when you emerge out of the shelter. If any small fires have managed to attached themselves to the house; you can put those out and save your house, AFTER THE FIRE FRONT HAS PASSED.
If you have your fuels managed, and have black-lined your, “Universal Wildfire Blueprint”, before you got into your shelter; then you are already setting in a huge black spot before the fire front passes. The fire front will pass over your blackspot, and you only have to be in there for a short while, but in theory that is better than weathering the firestorm’s passage inside the home. Chances are good, all will survive.
If you have done all this, you will be one of life’s examples, of Darwin’s theory of, “Survival of the fittest”. Those who simply ran for it. (the dead & the now homeless), that did not earn their survival), “The ready, set , go”, types. Well, hopefully those close call types will eventually adopt your methods of leadership and methods for the future.
Donate to Dragonslayers to help move the society toward wildfire survival, or at least tell the experts to learn and help Dragonslayers get a manufacturing center and a wildfire survival school, to put into place actual methods to do something effective other than just studying the things that Dragonslayers has already developed and proven. Tell politicians and fire agencies where to look to have an option to revert to when no one knows what to do again and again, and again and never can they connect the dots.