| Author | Message | ||
| Clint Hunter (Truthhunter)
Registered Member Username: Truthhunter Post Number: 227 Registered: 1-2009 Posted From: 24.129.232.232  Rating: N/A |
...the recent nearby bush fires in the BC Okanagan have brought my flawed bus master plan to front & center once again. Coming home from the shop on Monday after a day of hardly working, I was alerted to the bush fire smoke billing out from the near the bluff were I am based under. Putting the "bug out" preparedness plan into action immediately, I was startled to not be able to start the bus ( sitting dormant all winter, but routine battery maintenance kept up ) finding I had left the small tool kit at work and had no spare back up battery to replace the newly discovered "shorted open" number 2 battery, I was reminded that you can never have to much back up or pm on what is most important . Just one more lesson for the road; fortunately not a costly one this time, as the local fire brigade was fortunate enough to receive water bomber back up on fire control. I did manage to get the bus up & running with a little scrounging before bed time. I was surprise how most of the distant neighbors reacted to this incident, watching the action from there lawn chairs sipping beers ,not one doing any packing or setting up sprinklers for a fire guard; almost like a bunch of over insured buddhas living in a parraell un-reality to mine. "The sky is falling, the sky is falling" , said chicken little ! Do any others see there bus as a tool for disaster mitigation planning or am I just a tad eccentric with awareness ? | ||
| RJ Long (Rjlong)
Registered Member Username: Rjlong Post Number: 1586 Registered: 12-2000 Posted From: 98.192.173.82  Rating: N/A |
Clint - You on the Westside? Which fire was closer to you - Glenrosa or Rose Valley? To answer your question, over the years, several busnuts have actually had to utilize their coaches as emergency shelters - usually those in Hurricane Alley. But it seems that the most often utilization of the coach as an emergency "vehicle" is to provide back-up power to the main house when the electricity goes out. Sometimes for just a few hours, sometimes for several days. The Boy Scout motto rings true in these situations, doesn't it! FWIW & HTH. . .  | ||
| Clint Hunter (Truthhunter)
Registered Member Username: Truthhunter Post Number: 229 Registered: 1-2009 Posted From: 24.129.232.219 Rating: N/A |
... nope RJ way I am way south of kelowna 100km, and I like it that way. I am about 43 km (by road) south of penticton, 6 km north of Oliver locate under the south side of Mcintry bluff , the bush fire was on the north side of the bluff. ditto on the boy scouts, not that I was a member, this board is the my first membership in anything, first that meet my ultra high ethic standards ! Tea is always on fellow bus nuts, sorry no extra bus parking, yet. | ||
| Leland Bradley (Lee_bradley)
Registered Member Username: Lee_bradley Post Number: 38 Registered: 11-2006 Posted From: 138.163.106.72 Rating: N/A |
Clint, You have it correct. One of the selling points on our bus for my better half was its place in a 'bug out' or 'hunker down' plan. BUT the bus has to be ready to go anytime all the time. Major fire or earthquake; do you have water and food in the bus, is it fueled, will it start, when was the last time you started it, do you have a 'bug out' kit? Most people survive emergencies by luck and luck favors the prepared. | ||
| Buswarrior (Buswarrior)
Registered Member Username: Buswarrior Post Number: 1658 Registered: 12-2000 Posted From: 76.69.143.82  Rating: N/A |
Great thread truthhunter! Yup, the bus systems are an excellent back-up opportunity for the house, and an escape vehicle. Another good reason to park the coach with the fuel tank full, besides the defense against condensation water in the fuel. Some way to fill the fresh water tanks that doesn't involve the municipality or your house systems. Continent wide power outages, etc. And that same cache of canned food in the pantry can easily be transferred to the coach and away you go. Emergency preparedness means self supporting, so the emergency responders have fewer KNOBS to have to rescue from their lack of preparation when it hits the fan. happy coaching! buswarrior | ||
| Chuck Newman (Chuck_newman)
Registered Member Username: Chuck_newman Post Number: 382 Registered: 1-2005 Posted From: 99.153.84.192  Rating: N/A |
Clint, "Do any others see there bus as a tool for disaster mitigation planning or am I just a tad eccentric with awareness ?" Absolutely! Yes, I do plan for disasters -- man made and natural. And yes, some folks consider me eccentric. And that's OK. I lost lots of money in the dot com crash of 2001 because I listened to the "not a problem" "experts", but with some foresight and planning I didn't lose a penny in the fiasco of 2008/2009. And that's what we are talking about here -- a little foresight and planning. Regardless of what anyone else thinks of it. I've had four commercial RVs that were stocked, watered, fueled all the time here in earthquake country. When finished, we will be fulltiming in the bus with no real estate at all. Just a domicile in SD. But the bus is designed to make us totally self supporting for 30+ days in a crisis situation. Referring to your recent incident, we use things like constant full time air in the bus and isolated transfer capability of house batteries and engine batteries to offer speed and redundancy in moving to another location on a moments notice. We have scanned all important documents (drivers licenses, SS cards, birth certificates, insurance cards, credit cards, addresses, phone numbers, medical info, etc. etc.) and put all on a DVD then encrypted the information in case it falls into the wrong hands. One DVD at each kids house, and one in our "emergency exit" pouch by the door of the bus. The pouch also has cash and other essentials in it. FWIW | ||
| Ron Walker (Prevost82)
Registered Member Username: Prevost82 Post Number: 393 Registered: 11-2003 Posted From: 208.181.210.47  Rating: N/A |
Our bus is packed and read to go in a moments notice ... Thankfully we haven't had any fires yet on this side of the mountain,(Merritt)Clint, but with this long extended hot-dry spell and bug-kill pine around us, I'm expecting one. | ||
| Wec4104 (Wec4104)
Registered Member Username: Wec4104 Post Number: 59 Registered: 7-2008 Posted From: 68.80.242.72 Rating: N/A |
We are fortunate to live in an area of the country where earthquakes/brush fires/hurricanes and many other natural disasters are very rare. Nevertheless, history has shown that there are many other catastrophies (some man made) could strike and affect our daily lives. Remember Three mile island? Electrical grid multi-state power failures? Or what is next on the terrorist agenda? Recently, a friend of mine had a copy of a "Doom and Gloom" book about urban prepardness sitting on a table and I flipped through it. It was interesting to look at the lists of items they suggest for preparedness. With the exception of firearms, the bus covers a great deal of their suggestions. | ||
| Clint Hunter (Truthhunter)
Registered Member Username: Truthhunter Post Number: 230 Registered: 1-2009 Posted From: 24.129.232.219 Rating: N/A |
actually RW my biggest risk assessment "paranoia" with the wild fire is the old "mortgage foreclosure rubbing against the insurance policy" syndrome, in these days of asset deflation( use to be a BC fire warden many moons back). Nature is much more reliable than despair of human irrationality it seems | ||
| ED Hackenbruch (Shadowman)
Registered Member Username: Shadowman Post Number: 130 Registered: 11-2003 Posted From: 70.193.245.161 Rating: N/A |
We saw smoke to the north as we headed out of Wenatchee going to Winthrop on monday but could not tell where it was coming from. As we went up the Methow valley it cleared out so i figured it was farther to our east. Yesterday we went to Penticton for lunch and saw it was a little hazy there. This was all just a little get-away trip without the bus, left it in Vantage. Has been a little warm the last few days. :>) | ||
| Clint Hunter (Truthhunter)
Registered Member Username: Truthhunter Post Number: 231 Registered: 1-2009 Posted From: 24.129.232.232 Rating: N/A |
...thank you very much for the confirmation fellow bus nuts, I can sleep better tonight knowing that we all have a eye on this "page" in these days of extremely brilliant human stupidity by "the world elite" & there attempts to change the world for the worst for every being. Be Always Prepared, got it ? Seems to me the first meaning of all life is survival ! | ||
| Clint Hunter (Truthhunter)
Registered Member Username: Truthhunter Post Number: 233 Registered: 1-2009 Posted From: 24.129.232.232 Rating: N/A |
errr, ah , ehy ... forgot the part about the buses would not survive without their humans to service them, they would be of little more purpose than a rock on a mountain without a surviving human to occupy them (or store junk in them) almost missed the part about bus relevance in that last post. whew... time for a good sleep. | ||
| Clint Hunter (Truthhunter)
Registered Member Username: Truthhunter Post Number: 236 Registered: 1-2009 Posted From: 24.129.232.219 Rating: N/A |
yahawn... because events like this http://www.diplomatictraffic.com/debate.asp?ID=725 & how even the threat or "false flag" normally cause market manipulations on commodities such as diesel & food prices, all vital to how we move our buses out of harms way, natural or man made , regardless of there level of propagandization in main stream miss-media ! Am I correct or dreaming in left field again ? Time to go dig the sleep out of my eyes & stock up on bus provisions; and thanks for the feedback ladies & gentlemen! Direct feedback through my email address is welcome for the bashfull poster, just click on my bus picture at the left for the address. | ||
| David Evans (Dmd)
Registered Member Username: Dmd Post Number: 344 Registered: 10-2004 Posted From: 173.77.231.123  Rating: N/A |
I will attempt to not go political except to say that here on Long Island we have few choices to evacuate and excepting 2 ferries, they are all towards the city and there are only 2 lanes that allow commercial/truck traffic in them. Last week there was a construction fire on "the big one" for large traffic, the Throggs Neck bridge. Normally, it takes 1 and a half hours(in the standard shift coach) to get 50 miles off the island that is if you leave before 5 am. Now no heavy traffic on bridge over 7000lbs. Todays paper had the headline about our home grown terrorist's plan to bomb the railroad. If there was a mass exudus i cant imagine ever getting off of here, what with the courtousey and all normaly shown while driving! I guess this is a political rant after all! Now they are paying for a "study" for another tunnel or bridge to Conn! HA HA!! But if our neighbor will move his car we can leave our driveway with our getaway bus too! At least we will have A/C!And peanut butter! and beer, and some books, the dogs,and.... | ||
| Buswarrior (Buswarrior)
Registered Member Username: Buswarrior Post Number: 1660 Registered: 12-2000 Posted From: 76.71.105.134 Rating: |
Might be better to "evacuate-in-place" on the big island? happy coaching! buswarrior | ||
| Clint Hunter (Truthhunter)
Registered Member Username: Truthhunter Post Number: 239 Registered: 1-2009 Posted From: 24.129.232.232 Rating: N/A |
think out side the box, there was this recycle on the west coast that made a raft/island out of a gazillion use plastic pop bottles tied together, individually for redundancy, he even had some sort of sail idea, but I have not checked back for some time. . . it is all good when about buses & how we preserve them, in theory & practice; isn't it ? Call me a bus nut or something if you must, please ! |
