Immodest proposal.

Fire-prone cities should have permanent shelters.

In the cold war every city had a permanent fallout shelter in a civic building, stocked with fuel, generator, canned water, and nonperishable food. Since nuclear attacks were a Deepstate myth, the shelters were never used, but the government kept them ready.

Those shelters also served as tornado shelters in Oklahoma and Kansas where tornados are NOT a myth.

Serious fires in the west are like tornados in Oklahoma, occurring about every ten years in one city. If shelters were worth the expense for a myth, they should be worth the expense for a reality.

In this year’s big fire the fighters were ready but the city wasn’t. The emergency authorities kept expanding the evacuation zones. It looked like my area was next, so I packed a bag and started walking toward the bus stop, hoping to catch a bus toward downtown. There were no announced shelters at that point. I took a bus to downtown, talked with the very helpful desk lady at the bus plaza. She didn’t know any shelters, so I took the same bus back to my area, thinking the nearby library branch would be a potential. The library was closed, so I just went to the familiar Safeway, bought water, and sat to rest. Chatted with other oldsters who were doing the same thing, all equally confused. They had cellphones and I didn’t, but they weren’t getting better info from the cellphones. Finally I just walked downhill to my house and found BLESSEDLY that everything is fine. This area was never included in the evacs, though it’s close. The fire grew northward and this area is to the east.

The little blue house symbol points toward my house.

Later I heard that the downtown convention center was opened as a shelter. That’s the appopriate type of place, but NOBODY KNEW WHAT TO DO until lots of people were wandering the roads aimlessly.