Sunday Morning Coffee

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Some of you may know about a fire near Prescott called the Gladiator Fire. It started last Sunday as a structure fire that got into the forest. This fire is now close enough to Walker that we need start preparing to evacuate and as fire chief I am obviously in the middle of this. My phone has been blowing up, I am in contact with a lot of people, attending a lot of meetings and managing a lot of different things.

For the first week, the fire burned up a lot of empty USFS land but as it moves closer to Walker and Potato Patch (just south of Walker) there are now a lot structures at risk (only four have burned so far) which makes Walker the center of attention unless they can stop the fire in its tracks. It is about six or seven miles from top to bottom of the fire and the head of the fire is about 8 miles from Walker as of Saturday night.

The neat part of this is all there is to be learned and of course the downside is the threat to the community. Long story short, it is not probable that the fire gets all the way here but it is possible.

On Saturday Joellyn and I prepared to evacuate. We packed up a lot of clothes and a lot of stuff and took it to a friend's house in Prescott Valley. We actually don't have a lot of either but if there is a worst case outcome we won't have to start from scratch. There won't be much to take other than the dogs so no last minute scramble. Long time readers may notice similarities with things I've written over the years about navigating cycles with an investment portfolio.

One thing we did not take out of the house was any of our books. It's not like we have 1000 books or anything but in looking at them and deciding not necessary I thought about the story of Umberto Eco, as told in the Black Swan, who said something like it is not important what books you have read, but the books that you haven't read that are important.

This will be a very busy week around here. We should know whether we need to evacuate or not by mid-week (they will have either succeeded or failed at stopping the fire by then) but through the magic of spreadsheets we will be able to start defensive action on time if necessary.

For now Walker Fire's role is phone calls and meetings. If the fire gets here then we should be integrating with the outside crews that come through and stay for as long as it is safe or the incident ends.

Of course any of the above is subject to change at anytime.

The picture is from the Incident Command Post (ICP) at Mayer High School on Saturday morning.