# Exciting times

**URL:** <https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423>\
**Category:** Chatting over the Back Fence\
**Created:** [September 12, 2015, 9:17pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423 "2015-09-12T21:17:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 18\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![System1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/51bf81/32.png) [@System1](https://forums.suse.com/u/System1)\
**Post date:** [September 12, 2015, 9:17pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/1 "2015-09-12T21:17:49Z")

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Some of you already know this from Facebook. We live in the foothills  
of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the 2500 foot level, about 1.5  
hours southeast of Sacramento. The area is heavily wooded.

This past Wednesday a fire broke out just outside of Jackson, CA off  
highway 49, off a road named Butte Mountain Road. It was 5-10 acres.  
2 hours later it was over 200 acres and had taken down the power  
lines to the area where we live, as well as a large chunk of area  
between us and Jackson, and to the south.

The next morning, it was 4,000 acres, having spread into heavily  
wooded areas. It’s now 65,000 acres, so roughly 100 square miles.  
It’s 10% contained.

We haven’t been evacuated. The mandatory evacuation line is about 1  
mile south of us, as the crow flies. We just got power back last  
night at 10pm, and it’s still on, so that gives us water again, also,  
because we have a well. We both immediately took showers, once the  
water was warm enough.

Until the fire is contained, we’re still in danger. The winds were  
favorable to us until very early this morning, when they switched to  
coming from the south, which blew smoke into our area. We both got  
headaches from it. The most intense fire activity is currently just  
over a ridge to our south, and a little to the east.

We’re fine. We have an evacuation plan set and places to go in the  
event there’s a mandatory evacuation of our area. It’s pretty scary,  
though, especially when everything looks orange from the sun being  
filtered through the ashes and smoke from the fire.

Cal Fire is trying to surround the fire today, so they can get it  
contained. It’s threatening several towns in the area, including  
ours, San Andreas and Arnold. Calaveras Big Trees is just outside  
Arnold. From photos we’ve just seen, it looks like a town to our east  
named Mountain Ranch might have been engulfed.

We’re both exhausted from worry, as well as not getting much sleep  
due to no power for air conditioning, and high temperatures during the  
day and night. The weather is supposed to start cooling tomorrow, but  
at least as long as the power holds, we’re cool and smoke free in the  
house at the moment.

I can’t wait for this to be all over and the fire contained, though.  
We live a mile in on a road that has no outlet, so it’s important we  
know what’s going on in terms of evacuations.

As a result of John having gotten the parts necessary to use our  
Prius as a large battery backup system during a power outage (it  
provides up to 1000 watts of power), I’ve been glued to the fire news  
sites the past few days. It’s been a godsend to have the Prius to use  
that way. When the car’s batteries get low, it just turns on the  
engine itself and charges itself up. So we’ve been able to save most  
of the food in the refrigerator and freezer, as well as run the  
router and use tablets to make sure we know what in the heck is going  
on.

We’re safe for now, and will evacuate if it becomes necessary.

–  
Susan  
Novell Community Chat Moderator

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**Post date:** [September 12, 2015, 10:43pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/2 "2015-09-12T22:43:48Z")

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Susan,[color=blue]

> We’re safe for now, and will evacuate if it becomes necessary.[/color]

Good to know. Take care.

–  
Anders Gustafsson (NKP)  
The Aaland Islands (N60 E20)

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**Author:** ![ketter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/2bfe46/32.png) [@ketter](https://forums.suse.com/u/ketter)\
**Post date:** [September 14, 2015, 3:32pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/3 "2015-09-14T15:32:16Z")

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On Sat, 12 Sep 2015 18:17:49 GMT, “Susan” [ncci.mod@gmail.com](mailto:ncci.mod@gmail.com) wrote:  
[color=blue]

> Some of you already know this from Facebook. We live in the foothills  
> of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the 2500 foot level, about 1.5  
> hours southeast of Sacramento. The area is heavily wooded.
> 
> We’re safe for now, and will evacuate if it becomes necessary.[/color]

Thanks for letting us know. I don’t look at facebook that often and  
had not heard about this.  
Ken

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**Post date:** [September 14, 2015, 4:45pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/4 "2015-09-14T16:45:35Z")

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Sounds not fun and scary, sure hope they get it contained and all  
remain safe and sound.

–  
Stevo

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**Post date:** [September 19, 2015, 8:55pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/5 "2015-09-19T20:55:07Z")

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Well, we’re up to 65% contained, but today is supposed to be up in  
the 90’s, and it’s not supposed to get cool tonight, and that’s  
supposed to hold for a few days, so we’ll see how things go. So far,  
so good, but not out of the woods yet. 🙂

–  
Susan  
Novell Community Chat Moderator

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**Post date:** [September 19, 2015, 8:55pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/6 "2015-09-19T20:55:07Z")

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We’re still in some danger, though not nearly as much as before. It  
will be nice to be able to actually relax again one of these days! 🙂

–  
Susan  
Novell Community Chat Moderator

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**Post date:** [September 21, 2015, 6:56pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/7 "2015-09-21T18:56:42Z")

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How are you doing now? I read a bunch more houses burned. (sad). I  
keep worrying that with wind shifts, you may be a victim.

–  
Kim - 9/21/2015 9:56:03 AM

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**Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 11:13am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/8 "2015-09-22T11:13:22Z")

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Kgroneman,

I think that whatever happens to Susan, I don’t think we could ever  
describe her as a victim 🙂

–

Shaun Pond  
in my “day job” I work for ENGL; our aim is to make Windows deployment  
easy

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**Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 5:18pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/9 "2015-09-22T17:18:52Z")

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Kim:

We’re holding down the fort, and welcome to my world. That’s what  
we’ve been concerned about for the past two weeks. We’ve been pretty  
tired of being on pins and needles, and have been relieved to see the  
containment percentage increase daily. It’s 80% today! We were  
worried about wind yesterday. They were pretty much only able to  
maintain their containment lines because of it all day, but overnight  
they made great progress, afer the wind died down.

We’ve bought some new toys to make dealing with this sort of thing a  
little easier. One is a wireless thermometer. It has two remotes, so  
we can place one in the freezer in the garage and the other in the  
freezer in the kitchen, and the display device is on a wall where we  
can keep an eye on the temperatures. It has separate alarms for each  
of the remote sensors, and responds quickly to temperature changes. I  
think it was a little over $30. If you’re interested in which one we  
got, I can get the particulars from John.

The other is a 1500 watt inverter that displays the power draw, so we  
know how much power we’re using when drawing from the Prius. That  
will give us a better handle on what all we can plug in to keep the  
house going when the power is out. We figure that will come in handy  
when we lose power on winter days, also, which usually happens if we  
have a heavy snow.

As for the houses burning, I don’t think anymore burned in our fire  
or the Valley fire, but perhaps in some other fires that have since  
cropped up. They’re also finding more burned ones as the damage  
assessment teams go through the burned areas. There have been 545 in  
our Butte Fire that they’ve found so far.

There was one small community where quite a number of people refused  
to evacuate. Mountain Ranch. They were the Alamo crowd, who chose to  
stand their ground. They’re quite proud of themselves because they  
managed, with their own dozers and water trucks, to keep the fire  
away from parts of their community. I think that made the news.  
Unfortunately, what wasn’t mentioned was that the only fatalities in  
this fire were two men - one 65 and the other 80 - in that community  
who died in their homes, after refusing to evacuate. Their homes were  
consumed by fire. I’m not so sure they should be that proud, with  
that result.

We’re gathering things up to donate to those who have lost homes. I  
can’t imagine the pain they must be feeling, and I don’t want to be  
able to imagine it.

After the fire is 100% contained, we’re going to take a ride through  
the area closest to us that burned, to get a better idea of what we  
were facing, and how close the north end of the fire got to us. It’s  
difficult to gauge from maps, sometimes.

No one we know lost their homes, though one came awfully close -  
within a hundred yards, I’d say. Possibly less.

So, we’re okay, so far!

–  
Susan  
Novell Community Chat Moderator

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**Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 5:18pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/10 "2015-09-22T17:18:52Z")

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Thank you, Shaun. 🙂

–  
Susan  
Novell Community Chat Moderator

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**Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 5:32pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/11 "2015-09-22T17:32:42Z")

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It’s good to hear that you seem to be relatively safe for now. It  
sounds like those thermometers would be good to tell you if your power  
went out. Our freezer is on the same GFI circuit as our outside  
outlets and once in a blue moon someone (I won’t mention names, but it  
stars with M and ends with arilyn) will trip it without realizing what  
they did and wait for it to fix itself…while nobody realizes the  
freezer is out.

I feel sorry for the people that lost homes…I hope they were insured.  
Some things can’t be replaced though.

Anyway, I’m glad you’re safe.

–  
Kim - 9/22/2015 8:29:02 AM

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**Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 7:54pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/12 "2015-09-22T19:54:20Z")

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Kim:

Maybe this would be a good stocking stuffer for M, then:  
[http://www.amazon.com/AcuRite-Refrigerator-Freezer-Wireless-Thermometer/dp/B004QJVU78/ref=sr\_1\_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1442940530&sr=8-7&keywords=freezer+thermometer](http://www.amazon.com/AcuRite-Refrigerator-Freezer-Wireless-Thermometer/dp/B004QJVU78/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1442940530&sr=8-7&keywords=freezer+thermometer)

It was $25.98 with free Prime shipping, made by AcuRite, who also  
make great weather stations. 🙂

–  
Susan  
Novell Community Chat Moderator

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**Post date:** [September 22, 2015, 8:57pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/13 "2015-09-22T20:57:47Z")

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I think that’s something she would want/use. How far apart are your  
units? It shows the receiver just outside the fridge/freezer but I’d  
like it to monitor two freezers that are about 40 feet apart.  
Nevermind, I see it in the Q/A section. 100m range. By golly, I think  
I’ll do it . Thanks!

–  
Kim - 9/22/2015 11:53:41 AM

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**Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 2:34am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/14 "2015-09-23T02:34:10Z")

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Kim:

John guestimates the two sensors are 50 feet apart. There are three  
walls between them. We were going to put the main readout on the side  
of the refrigerator (it has magnetic strips on the back), but that  
was too far away for the sensor in the garage freezer. So we  
compromised on a location roughly halfway between the two for the  
display.

It worked on the opposite side of the kitchen wall, so it was  
probably that third wall that made the difference, but that wasn’t a  
convenient place to view it, so we moved it more equidistant between  
the two, where there’s a spot we walk by regularly. With the alarm,  
that’s not really necessary, but it’s a new toy, so we like to look  
at it. LOL

Amazon has a really good return policy, where they provide the  
shipping label, if it’s fulfilled by Amazon, and doesn’t suit your  
needs. You’d have to check who fulfills it. I didn’t notice when I  
got the link. 🙂

–  
Susan  
Novell Community Chat Moderator

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**Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 2:36am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/15 "2015-09-23T02:36:25Z")

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And if you count a perpendicular wall, there are actually 5 walls  
between the two sensors. 🙂

–  
Susan  
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**Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 8:16am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/16 "2015-09-23T08:16:01Z")

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Hi Susan,

I apologize for my slow response to your rather important thread!

I am glad that you are safe but did wait anxiously for your news.

Please do take good care of yourself 🙂

Cheers,

–  
Laura Buckley  
Technical Consultant  
IT Dynamics, South Africa

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**Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 4:58pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/17 "2015-09-23T16:58:49Z")

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No worries, Laura. We are taking excellent care of ourselves! LOL

–  
Susan  
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**Post date:** [September 23, 2015, 6:02pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/exciting-times/27423/18 "2015-09-23T18:02:40Z")

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I’ve got a weather station from the same company and it works decently.  
It sounds like I should be able to make it work here. Thanks.

–  
Kim - 9/23/2015 9:01:14 AM