I asked about her several days ago. I'm not sure if they live in one of the burned areas, but IIRC, they're fairly close to it.
Aww, thank you guys both for thinking of us, and for caring! Viper GTS, thanks for dropping me a text today and asking too. I hadn't thought to check in on AT but I should have.
Yes, we're in the fire area. About 5 minutes as the crow flies from the southmost evacuation line, or 10 minutes from the fire line of the Mendocino Lake Complex Fire (Redwood Complex Fire).
We were awakened about 2 am Monday by an automated call from the Mendocino County Sheriff's office through the voluntary sign up emergency notification service, Everbridge. Went outside to see half the horizon glowing red, with the fire clearly already huge and out of control. Just from seeing the glow we could tell the fire had jumped Highway 101 and stretched to and past the town of Redwood Valley.
Although there was no formal evacuation for us yet, we knew getting livestock evacuated would not be a quick process so we started packing our goats up in the F550 dump truck linuxboy recently got to aid our construction efforts. Couple of quick points here:
1. Once you get two goats in the truck, you then need one person to secure them there to keep them from jumping out while other goats are caught and put in the truck.
2. Goat hooves rattling around on a metal floor is apparently fingernails on a chalkboard to other goats, which makes catching the loose ones harder.
3. Once you exceed 12 nervous goats in one truck, you have created a thunder dome. They will actively try to kill each other.
4. It is impossible to catch all the goats when you need them.
We got most of our girls packed up but there were six who refused to get near us, and we had to make the call that if evacuated we'd give it one more try but otherwise we'd have to turn them loose to hopefully fend ok on their own.
We also packed up papers, a couple blankets, all the electronics (of course) and then couldn't think of anything else that we really needed and couldn't replace... so we didn't pack anything else.
Then we waited. God bless the people who put police and fire scanners on Broadcastify. That and summaries of that on Facebook were really our only good sources of minute to minute information. We don't have a local TV station, our local newspaper is effectively useless, and nobody was covering us on any of the bigger stations. Napa and Sonoma were (and still are) getting plenty of press. Mendocino didn't even really get mentioned until the third day, and only then because we had the first fatality.
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/10/mendocino-county-fire-people-here-are-suffering-too/
We never did get evacuated (we let the goats back out after 24 hours) because the amazing firefighters held the line at Road I outside Redwood Valley's tiny two-street downtown. Our side of the fire started from a blown transformer and down power lines, and then met in the middle with a fire that started at the same time in tiny Potter Valley. Neither main street burned, but especially in Redwood Valley the rural residential areas were _destroyed_. One acquaintance of mine, a potter of some local acclaim, escaped on foot by hiking through brush when her way out was blocked by burning trees. A local winery that was a huge sponsor of the arts and community development here lost nearly everything on their property, including several houses they rented to others.
It's hard to communicate the scale of the damage up here. No doubt, by the numbers Santa Rosa was harder hit. By percentages though, Redwood Valley has been decimated. You can't go anywhere in town right now without encountering multiple people who lost everything. A friend of mine is family to the Shepherds, whose 14 year old son died and where his sister and both parents are now severe burn victims at three different hospitals with years of recovery in front of them.
As someone pointed out earlier in the thread, this isn't a rich area. The per capita income in Redwood Valley is $24,200 a year. Thanks to the lack of media coverage for Mendocino County, most support for the fire victims is coming in locally, out of the pockets and goodness of heart of other locals.
As of now the fire is coming up on 36,000 acres and is 70% contained, having killed 8 people that we know of so far and burned hundreds of homes. To our personal relief the active front has moved north and east, far from our home and most populated areas.
So... we're ok, but our community is not and will not be for a long time. The majority of the residences in Redwood Valley burned. The area won't recover quickly, if at all.
If anyone feels moved to help,
www.ncoinc.org is the best place to donate. It's a local non-profit that disperses 100% of donated funds directly to fire victims. The other thing we could use is awareness. Please share that our rural, less wealthy area was badly hurt by the fires too! The more public awareness there is, the more our area will continue to be served. We didn't get included in the initial FEMA support, for example, until there was some slight increase in media attention. Help by making sure we're counted in this disaster too.