Will the San Diego Wildfires Be Our Wakeup Call?

If you've been wondering where I've been, I attended a wedding for friends of ours in San Diego last weekend. The wedding ceremony was memorable and everyone truly had a good time, but reality quickly rolled in the next day when I went north to Escondido to visit some of my wife's relatives in Escondido, California.

On Sunday we could see the smoke clouds starting to form off in the distant sky and the winds were getting ferocious, so we wondered what was going on. A check of the web indicated that a wildfire - the "Witch Creek" fire - had started several miles east of Escondido in the town of Santa Ysabel - home to a great landmark - Dudley's Bakery. Having lived in northern San Diego county for 10 years, I thought "Well, that's quite a ways east, so it shouldn't be any real problem." As it turns out, I underestimated the winds. How wrong could I be? Who would have thought the fire would travel that many miles to the freeway and then jump the freeway and start heading toward the ocean?

As my wife and I left Escondido Sunday afternoon and traveled south along Interstate 15 into Rancho Bernardo (where we lived for a time) I had to turn on the car's headlights in mid-afternoon in order to see. I could tell things weren't going well at all. Once we got back to our hotel - not too far from Qualcomm Stadium - the air quality had turned very unhealthful. Having seen wildfires break out before and having worked on insurance company disaster teams to help homeowners in the aftermath, I knew there would be long days and nights ahead for many of the residents of the area.

Emergency preparedness officials in San Diego County recently implemented a reverse-911 system just a month before the fires broke out. Thanks to that system, my wife's relatives received an emergency wakeup call around 3AM Monday morning to evacuate their homes. I'm happy to report that they are all safe at this moment, and I'm pleased that the winds have now shifted onshore to help with firefighting efforts. Hopefully, these terrible fires will all be under control very soon.

We considered ourselves fortunate to be able to leave the area Monday morning without any problems at the airport (other than my "full Monty" body search, which is another story), but all of this is a sharp reminder that we need to take the necessary steps to protect ourselves from disaster ahead of time and to take steps that will allow us to get back on track with a minimum amount of time and effort after disaster strikes.

SignOnSanDiego.com, part of the San Diego Union Tribune newspaper, quotes fire authorities as reporting that "As the Witch Creek fire raced through some of San Diego County's priciest neighborhoods and crept to the edge of others north and east of Rancho Santa Fe, not a single home in the five subdivisions that have implemented the strategy (a land-use strategy designed to protect new developments from devastation in the county's exurban, fire-prone areas) was lost".

The plan, called "shelter in place" imposes construction and landscaping standards that include mandatory interior fire sprinklers and broad swaths of protective landscaping. The purpose of the program is to allow homeowners to remain in place in their homes if they aren't able to evacuate.

Plans such as this are part of risk management - identifiying risks and then strategizing to eliminate those that can be eliminated and provide means for handling risk that cannot be entirely eliminated by managing it - through insurance, savings, advance planning and a variety of other techniques you can use to both minimze your loss and to minimize your downtime after a loss occurs.

Are you and your home business prepared for a natural disaster? Do you have backup and/or off-site copies of important records and computer files? Do you have emergency supplies on hand in the event disaster lands at your front door? If not, it's never too soon to begin your personal and business risk management programs.

Some dear friends of mine lost their home in the Cedar fire in the Scripps Ranch area of San Diego four years ago. I've visited with many homeowners who watched their lives go up in flames or get washed away in floods or blown away in tornadoes. Yes, it's always the most important thing that lives are preserved. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be prepared to protect your property and minimize your financial losses as well.

My prayers are with those in Southern California and others who are facing what may be the biggest hardship of their entire lives. Hopefully, we can all learn from tragic experiences like these to become stronger.

I'd love to hear from readers in the Southern California area. I"ve stared a new post under the title Disaster Preparedness in the General Discussion area of the About Home Business forum. You can also email me and let me know how you were affected by the fires, what steps you took ahead of time and what you'll do in the future to prepare for these types of situations. I'll be happy to share your comments and suggestions with my readers. Maybe we can all learn how to be better prepared and how we can help others now and in the days ahead.

Meanwhile, my prayers are with you.