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Thread: Urban, or suburban travel during SHTF

  1. #1
    Senior Member

    Join Date
    May 2014
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    near Pasadena, Ca.
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    448

    Urban, or suburban travel during SHTF

    Yesterday I got a very good, real life look at what will happen when SHTF. Actually it was a localized shtf event in Orange County, Ca. I was in the City or Irvine for the day and a typical Southern California brushfire broke out. We have had several weeks of typically warm/hot weather. Yesterday we also had the pleasure of hot high winds, known around here as Santa Ana Winds.

    The fire started in the morning around 10:30, origin unknown in the hills above Anaheim. It grew exponentially until around noon it was at 2,500 acres. Many of the thousands of homes in the immediate area of the fire had to be evacuated and many of those homes are horse property. A little after 1500 PDT I left where I was in Irvine. The city of Irvine is just southeast of the fire area and masses of evacuating people were in the area. There were thousands of others who were trying to get to their homes before they were ordered to evacuate. The result was gridlock. Major freeways in the area were closed as well as many of the major surface streets.

    A trip of 18.3 miles which should have taken me about 32 minutes normally was a two hour and 20 minute drive.

    If you think that when a SHTF situation happens you will just hop in your car and leave the area, think again!

    By the way the fire is one of the 'smaller fires' currently burning in the state. Apparently the great wine producing area of Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino counties are dealing with terrific loses. Local news is concentrating on our local fire so I don't have too many facts on what has taken place up there, but the loss of at lest 11 lives and thousands of homes and businesses has taken place.

  2. #2
    may be in trouble


    Join Date
    May 2015
    Location
    Mid-South TN
    Posts
    708
    Many of the high end getaway places that went up were still laboring under the stupid Green "don't cut your undergrowth that is the habitat of some cute li'l field mouse, or we'll fine you into oblivion" laws, I'd bet anything.

    As to the vineyards, they shoulda bit down and kicked on all their irrigation at top output and took a 'major' bottom line hit, instead of the 'total loss' they have to contend with now.

    This was too perfect and too fast. Either some dumbass campers that didn't know to put spark arrestors over their fires, or these were set deliberately, and if the setters are found, they will, at best, be lynched. In a just world, burned.

    SHTF getting out of Dodge should plan on getting out on secondary and county roads, not the billion dollar chokepoints that are interstates.

    I've never understood why, when an evacuation is ordered, the incoming interstate lanes aren't throttled back to just a lane or two for supplies and police and the remaining used as outgoing lanes.

  3. #3
    I'll most likely shit myself



    bacpacker's Avatar
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    Mar 2011
    Location
    East Tennessee
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    7,599
    Sorry to hear that Socal. Sounds all to much like the Gatlinburg fire here last December. Very dry all summer and fall. 2 dunbass kids go in the woods flicking matches and start a small fire. The Park Service in their wisdom decide not to fight it. 2 days later we have a wind storm with winds topping 80mph and it jumped from 50 to 25000 acres over night. 14 dead, 20000+ buildings destroyed. Park service don't want the continued publicity so the 2 kids are walking away Scott free.

  4. #4
    Bacon saver

    Brownwater Riverrat 13's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Location
    TN
    Posts
    2,490
    I'm just glad to hear you guys are GTG. Shit's happening everywhere right now. So just be on your guard people, common sense applies here. Looks like a cold year coming as well, so stock up on your things to keep you warm if the power goes out. Not like CA needs fire wood, pardon the pun but we could be in for a cold one.
    Be safe.............the night is your friend.

  5. #5
    For the Love of Cats


    Sniper-T's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Location
    The Great White North!
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    8,939
    Since I work in the heart of the city and live rural, my plan is to get out of town as fast as possible, in whatever direction happens to be the easiest. Once out of town, I have my choice of roads to take me towards home, and only needing the arteries again for a couple of key bridges. (but these could be 40 miles from the city)
    Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day!
    Light a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life!

    Cat's are food... not friends!

    If you're going to fight, then fight like you're the third monkey on the ramp into Noah's arc... and brother, it's starting to rain.

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