Tag: Fire

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Medical Preparedness

Day 627 and First Responder

My hands are stained blood red. Despite a good scrubbing, my cuticles definitely show that I spent time packing wounds today. Ok, fake wounds. And it’s fake blood. I am taking a wilderness medical incident certification course. And it is very hands on. Literally.

A firefighter packing compressed gauze into a femoral artery simulator

I got the opportunity to take a spot in a course that one of my friends teaches. I’ve got so much exposure to medicine after the last several years of health challenges that I’ve been yearning to upgrade my knowledge to something more practical than my own personal biohacking. So when Tom offered up a spot in his medical incident certification course for wilderness response, I said you know what fuck it I’m going to do it.

And I’m so glad I did. Not because I anticipate needing to apply a tourniquet in the back country of Montana. Or that I’ll be faced with packing a groin wound to stop someone from bleeding out when they are hours away from the hospital. Though I am glad I now know how. But because I think hands on experience with a rougher world is experience I need to do my job investing in an increasingly complex, chaotic and unstable world.

I was absolutely enthralled by the first day. It was me and a bunch of other much more experienced EMTs, paramedics and wildfire fighters. I also met a number of extremely savvy folks who special in fire and emergency incident response.

I was very much thrown into the deep end of first responder world and I’m not ashamed to say I “died” on the very first scenario test as I’ve got no idea what I’m doing. But I’m soaking up as much information as I can as fast as I can. Though not quite as fast as arterial blood gushes. Yet. Ask me on Friday if I’ve improved.

I couldn’t tell you precisely why I think this kind of hands on exposure to emergency response is so crucial but something deep in my gut says that I cannot possibly invest in a changing world without having some on the ground exposure.

The folks who are fighting our worst wildfires and responding to our most intense natural disasters know something visceral about chaos and the fragility of modernity that the rest of us do a lot to suppress.

Just casual conversations as we went through lessons and practice opened up my mind to new areas of opportunity. I found half a dozen blind spots I didn’t know I had. The world is much more chaotic than the media and our social channels let on. But it’s also possible to tackle them head on. We are not helpless. And it’s not hopeless. And I’m feeling fully empowered to deepen my relationship to chaos as I learn just when and where I have more agency.

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Preparedness

Day 620 and AQI

I am in the throes of a horrifying migraine. The take two Imitrax and pray type. It’s also the nausea inducing type so I’ve not eaten all day. I feel awful. And it’s mostly not my own fault even though I often like to blame flares in symptoms on my own lack of discipline or purity in maintaining some Platonic ideal of lifestyle or wellness regimen.

It is fire season in the west and I’m sure some, if not most, of my migraine is tied to the horrifying air quality that is choking out thousands of miles of California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.

An AQI reading of western America on September 12th at 3:48pm Mountain Time from PurpleAir

The AQI or air quality index in my neck of the woods is 160. Unhealthy for sensitive individuals is the coy and somewhat misleading phrase used. It means in practical terms visibility is so bad I can’t see the mountains a few miles away.

Montana is at the moment free of any major fires. Our colder temperatures, lack of pervasive fire beetle blight, and reduced density makes it statistically safer than the Colorado front range when it comes to total fire danger. But it’s no safer from prevailing winds and the pollution from fire in other states. In order to escape from it entirely I’d probably have to leave the continent.

I’ve obviously opted not to leave my home region of the mountain west even if I have accepted moving to a more northern and protected corner of it. But there is a certain existential “No Exit” sense I have with AQI and fire season in general. It may just be my lot in life. Maybe it’s everyone’s lot. To give up your homeland is a complicated fight. I expect for some of humanity it must involve either certain death or the prospect of great riches

Categories
Preparedness

Day 477 and Extreme Risk

It’s been hot, dry and windy today on the front range of the Rocky Mountains. A rare “extreme” fire danger warning was issued for much of the state of Colorado. One hasn’t sent been issued for over a decade even though clearly we’ve seen massive conflagrations just in the last four months.

As is typical for a day where I know a storm or natural disaster is looming I felt anxious. My whole body felt achy and inflamed. It was enough of a challenge I didn’t even try to do my usual shower and clean routine. I made an attempt at doing some food inventory as that seemed brain dead but I barely finished one drawer before I had to stop and rest.

I have been considering packing a more extensive go bag as the risk of evacuation seems to have heightened. If this kind of evacuation is a regular occurrence I’d rather have nice clothing and good skincare in my bag bag when I flee to a hotel or a friend’s place. Right now I’ve got boots, Mylar wraps and other traditional emergency gear. But if I’m going to have to maintain a normal life while the world crumbles I guess I’ll need mascara & little back dress just as much as water purification tablets.

I wish this was just paranoia. In just the past 48 hours we’ve seen two evacuation notices in Boulder. One evacuation was around a trailhead by a neighborhood where I lived in fifth and sixth grade and another one on the north side of town where I used to board my horse.

I cannot tell you how jumpy it makes me to see regular fire evacuation notices in your hometown. Our town sub-Reddit is filled with folks who are still recovering from the Marshall Fire and are rightfully concerned to be facing the possibility of another fire. I personally hate it. It makes me long to flee to somewhere with less existential climate change risk. Of course, those places are getting harder and harder to find.

Categories
Emotional Work Preparedness

Day 365 and Normalcy Bias

Today officially marks a full year of writing every single day. What should be a sense of accomplishment is mostly a sense of comfort at my own discipline. It’s an edge. I like to be improving and that takes good habits. Writing daily been an enormously positive influence in my daily life. I don’t have any plans to stop but as with hang habit you take it one day at a time.

I’m writing from Boulder Colorado after one of the worst natural disasters our state has ever seen. Though the experience was entirely unnatural. Gusting winds over 100mph combined with bone dry grasslands to start a raging wildfire in the middle of the suburbs. The front range hasn’t seen snow yet this season so Chinook winds must have rolled over a downed power line. The wildfire destroyed two towns in my county in the space of a few hours. Last I heard over 500 homes were lost.

I’m devastated. I feel genuinely traumatized even as I’m safe. But of course I feel the trauma of the hour. This is my home. My neighbors lost their homes. All the roads that are closed are my daily routes. My fucking grocery store was burning. Another climate driven disaster makes the national news. But it’s not somewhere else. It’s my home. Better active shooter I guess. A comparison we can make in Boulder. Gallows humor.

I was working through most of the fire. Just letting the apocalypse unfold around me as I went about my business. 8 miles away the world was on fire but I had no evacuation order. No reason to stop working. I closed the blinds as I found the hurricane force gusts unsettling. They shook the house. I would check social media on my phone in between pitches and worked on financial modeling. I took an Ativan to calm myself down so I could focus.

I had explicitly known something like this was coming. Maybe not this crisis. But more weird shit was inbound bWe named our fund chaotic.capital. Precisely because we believe stochastic shit will dominate the next decade. We are betting the future will be chaotic so we must bake flexibility into everything. There is good money to be made betting on chaos. Normally bias will lose you money. Chaos is good for business.

So what does that have to do with writing every day? I want to say something wise about bearing witness. But I don’t think I’m capable of living so large with this much fear around me. I didn’t expect the exercise of daily writing would mean writing through crisis. But I should have. Normalcy bias effects me too.

This year showed me stochastic chaos regularly. After only six days of writing the insurrection in Washing’s D.C. happened. And so I wrote because I made the commitment. And then a few months later a man shot dead 10 people in a grocery store down the road. And so I wrote. Because it’s my habit. I didn’t expect to be covering so much chaotic shit in a public journal.

And yet I must have in some sense predicted that life would take this path even if I wasn’t directly in it. Or I wouldn’t have named the fund chaotic. I wouldn’t proudly discuss prepping. This is the world I live in. Chaos is a given and I’m going to work towards a better future. I’m documenting it as it comes with these essays. And I guess we will see how far it goes. Thanks for joining me for the first year.