Reno and surrounding areas: Official spotted, BS, and meets thread

Crap. Sorry dude. Hopefully not too much damage.

 

That stinks. Looks like you made quick work of it though

 

Good deal, looks like it could have been a lot worse. At least the tree stayed outside the house.

 

I have the PulsePoint app, and saw the 1300 dispatch for the fire at Pinehaven. I live south, so I kept the scanner on, but figured "wind direction favorable for us". We'd lost power a bit earlier, but the UPS kept internet running, so I was luckily connected to everything going on. I could hear the FD and PD boys falling back - they were effectively resource starved, in addition to dealing with the wind. At first I figured we'd be fine up here on Ridgeview since the wind was from the south, and the fire was to the north. Regardless, I started to soak the yards, fences. etc. I heard Chiefs calling strike teams in to do structure protection, and those team leads radioing back "I have no engines to conduct structure protection." Whatever they had, it seemed resources were dedicated towards evacuation and keeping those routes open. For the first 60 minutes there was essentially no coordinated effort against the fire. No slam on RFD or TMFPD - they just didn't have the equipment or the time to get ahead of it.

About 2:15 I started to hear chatter about pushing the perimeter back to Ridgeview, and I was home with both kids. Told the oldest what was up, and told her to pack for her and her baby sister. I packed, started loading the car, and finally my wife shows up an hour later, 15 minutes before Reno PD came by and made the evac notice official. Wife brought a friend, so they took the T4R and the Highlander and the kids and most of the stuff. I loaded some last items into the truck, ready to leave as the smoke got heavy.

The wind was coming from the NW and it looked bad, but I swear at the last second, the wind turned to come from the north. Parked the truck, and determined the fire was coming over the hill and parallel to my back yard. Added another 50' to the hose, got up on my rock wall, and put the wet stuff on the red stuff. By 4:30 the back hill was pretty involved, but the pre-soaking was keeping things at bay 15-20 yards from the house. By 4:45, FF hiked in from the street-side and ran a hose line. By 5:30, it was pretty much over. I knocked down a few hot spots, re-soaked the deck, fences, yard, and anything else I could reach at that point. I checked on the 2 neighbors who stayed (elderly), let them know that they weren't alone on the block and made sure they could reach me if they needed anything.

By 6:30 it was raining, and I took a ride to the top of Ridgeview. The fire was well off to the west and northwest, with lots of Type 3's up in the hills doing their thing. Talked to a few more neighbors, and checked the roadblock down the hill. Lots of people wanted in, but RPD said "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" Heavy police presence all night, so I didn't get to send any looters to Hell. #SadFace

Damage for us was minimal. Lost a tree to the wind, and I had to remove part of a fence to create a backup egress route. RFD turned my neighbors fence into kindling to run their line, but most of us left gates propped open for FF.

What a f*cking shitshow. Hats off to the FF and LE that took care of business as best they could. I know they lost some homes in the fire, but they did a damn good job since no one is dead.

 

Well you had a helluva eventful night! Glad to hear all's ok

 

wind driven fires suck!!! What a long night..

 

Fuuuuck! That was some interesting reading! Glad you all are ok after all of that. Trees falling over, fires running people out of their houses, chaotic wind and rain all night... gotdamn. Not much to report from over here in Carson aside from more power outages.

 

Saw your story on IG... At least you got some firewood out of it.

 

Too eventuful.

The sage and other shrubs on the hill behind my house (which a good chunk of is apparently mine, according to the plats) are getting ripped out starting Saturday morning. I'm going to see if neighbors will let me do the same on their land. Probably have to rent a dump trailer to carry it all away, but it's cheap insurance and a relatively minor inconvenience compared to the folks that don't have homes left.

There just were not enough crews and Type 3/4 engines to go around. I'm totally assuming this is because NDF and CalFire crews are mostly seasonal, and November now is technically not fire season. I'm eyeballing a 70 gallon skid with a 20 gpm/ 125 psi Honda pump and 100' of 1" line. It's a $5k investment (which is cheap), but I bet I never used more than 40 gallons of water the whole time. That and some water barrels with a transfer pump, and I can do some good next time. There will be a next time.

Some interesting things I learned/realized:

-Point of origin was the same as the 2011 Caughlin Fire. The 2011 fire was originally named the Pinehaven Fire. The second IMT changed it to Caughlin.
-Start time was 9 years to the day, and almost the hour, of the 2011 fire.
-Rate of spread and progression was pretty much identical.
-Fuel load this time was lower because of the 2011 fire; that probably saved homes this time around.
-Reducing fuel loads around the house, i.e. leaf piles, was impossible. We cleaned our yard last weekend and it was spotless. The wind event took more leaves off the trees and
swirled them into nice big piles in hidden corners.
-Since I had zero time to remove leaf piles, I got them wet. A key takeaway is to kick and disperse the piles so you soak all the fuel, not just the top layer.
-Fences and eaves were soaked too. I was watching embers hit my damp fences, and fall onto the soaked deck, and extinguish.
-Soak UNDER the deck too. Shit collects down there.
-Soak AFTER the fire has passed. Stuff was still flying around, and a smoldering ember would have made things worse. This also happened after the IA on the Caughlin Fire.
-Rain only does so much good initially. With light amounts, you need several hours of soaking to get the fuel too wet to burn.
-Phos-Chek comes in small totes now (makes 5 gallon batches you can apply with a sprayer), and it's not orange dyed. It's the same stuff the air tankers dump on big fires and it buys you
time, nothing more. I've got a lot of that stuff on order now, just waiting for the Amazon man to show up. You can pre-treat in summer and the stuff lasts until the first rains/snow. Again, it buys you some time and some space, it's not a fix-all.

Finally, we took hot soup and sweets to the RPD officer manning our local checkpoint. It was cold, the guy had a long shift in the rain, dealing with some difficult people, and still had a remarkably positive attitude. For the 'defund' crowed out there, next time I suggest you staff checkpoints with "Traffic Crisis Mediation Negotiators" with degrees in social work and family counseling.

 

Glad you're alright, sounds like you've got a good plan. I heard a really good review on the fireproof eave vents, might be worth looking into.

https://www.vulcanvents.com/

 

I'm gonna check those out! I have some 1/16" stainless mesh I can cut and staple in place, but something off-the-shelf would be worth it, too!

 

From what they were saying as long as your vents are under 1/4" you should be okay, but who's going to trust a crazy juvenile ember. There's also a product that you can spray on your roof/siding to protect it right before you pull the plug that was pretty reasonably priced in the grand scheme, and had an unlimited shelf life.

 

Any of your neighbors have a pool?

I watch a local guy’s YouTube channel. Trent Palmer. He had a recent video about firefighting stuff after a couple close calls at his place up in Red Rock.

He got one of these things. They actually don’t seem too badly priced either for what you get.

https://www.qtacfire.com/fire-utv-atv-skids/qtac-40s


https://youtu.be/oIWxA7RNLI8

 

Been looking at the QTAC units as well. No pools within hose reach, but if I had one of those on a trailer in the garage, it would be trivial to have it prepped for quick use when things start to get ugly.

 

Ill tell you we had just about every apparatus in the valley on this fire. we have 14 staffed engines every day and we ended up getting 28 apparatus on the fire in a short amount of time with people coming into work. We had amazing support from our neighboring departments and unfortunately, there was a major fire down south of Gardnerville, and one north of us that started about the same time. Not enough resources to around. You are right, most seasonal crews are laid off right now and the remaining ones were fighting fire. Fires like this take alot of type 1 engines though. We don't care about the brush, we care about you and your neighbors homes.

A few more points to bring up about the caughlin fire 9 years ago, now we have more experience, better tactics, and most of all more staffing. We lost 40 homes in 2011. We lost 5 on this fire and another 20 damaged.


defensible space, dispersing fuel loads, and soaking is key. GREAT JOB AMIGO!!!! Im glad your house wasn't a statistic.

 

Maybe you can educate me. Allllllll day, the wind was out of the S/SW. Literally looking out my window and watching the neighbor's yard, I never once saw the wind shift from 0700, through at least 1400. Then I was packing and soaking. But, by 1630 that changed and I was getting a breeze from the N/NW. Did the volume of heat from the fire generate that wind change? Literally, the wind should have kept blowing the fire away from us, and it did an absolute 180, as best I can tell.

I guess I'm just wondering, "why?" I would have started soaking and packing when I heard the first dispatch call around 1300 if I'd known it was likely to turn and head back towards me. I would have had the wife come right back, and done a lot more proactively with that extra 60-90 minutes of BOHICA-notice.

 

The wind was changing direction all afternoon in Midtown. I was trying to stay warm by the fire pit in the afternoon while I was BBQing but the wind shifts made that impossible so I put it out and went inside.

 

Headed to Reno, come get these tires!
I'll also have a 3rd gen take off K&N intake available soon. The new one is in the back seat I just haven't swapped it out yet.