Over the last 12-days, the Spring Mountain ranges west of Las Vegas have been on fire (“Carpenter 1 Fire”). Nearly 28,000 acres have been burned. Hundreds of families have been displaced as their neighborhoods have been under mandatory evacuation. My company owns and operates The Resort on Mt Charleston, which is currently closed due to the fires and evacuation orders. I can better speak of what happened at the Resort, but I assume similar facts happened all over the mountain. At about 10:30 PM on Friday, July 5, 2013, as guests were winding down for the night, officers from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department arrived at the property and said the hotel needed to be evacuated due to the smoke and potential for the fire to the hotel. Metro Police walked the hotel with hotel staff and knocked on each door, making sure that everyone left, with basically no notice. The residents up in the area had a similar time frame. There was some rain the last 2-days, which helped fire crews get the fire from 10% contained to 50% contained. Without the help from the rain, crews might still have the fire at 10% containment.
How does this fire effect each of us? According to the American Red Cross, a house fire is the most common disaster in Southern Nevada. If a fire would to affect your home, or a close neighbors, and you were forced to evacuate, do you have a plan? What if it wasn’t a fire but some other disaster? How what you get out of your house? What would you grab if you only had seconds? Where would you go? How would you get there? How would you let others know where you were? Would you be an asset or a liability? How long could you survive? What if the disaster didn’t cause you to have to leave your house, but rather, one in which you couldn’t leave your house. How long could you survive without going to the grocery store? How much water do you have? Can you protect your family from looters?
As you think of these, remember the Rules of 3. Generally someone can survive for:
- 3 minutes without oxygen
- 3 hours without shelter
- 3 days without water
- 3 weeks without food
For some helpful tips and resources on preparedness, visit Mike’s World News’ Emergency Preparedness and Family Home Storage page.
1 Comment
When I lived in Vegas, sometimes we would go up Mt Charleston to get a break from the heat.
As for our current situation, I have a fairly good firebreak around the house, but need to make a solid evacuation plan, maybe some large canvas bags or containers labeled with the valuables and other irreplaceable items that will go in them and numbered by priority incase of very short notice.