People of Richmond: How prepared are you for a possible wildfire?

Lucas Hernandez

“I think so. I do have a go bag. I had bottles of water next to the go bag in a case, but I drank them. My spare car keys are in there, and I think I have rope. I packed it a long time ago, I just haven’t touched it because there hasn’t been an emergency.” (Lucas Hernandez, private school campus assistant)

Joseph Berry

“We have an emergency kit that we have set up in case the power goes out or we have to grab things quickly. We have water, toilet paper, maps and a first aid kit, just in case everything goes haywire and we have to get out.” (Joseph Berry, health aide)

Whit Brizendine

“Nope. I have dry food around, but if the water stopped working I would be screwed. I have nuts and things like that that could get me through a few days.” (Whit Brizendine, technical operations coordinator)

Donna and Emma Tai

“I am concerned about it, mostly because of all the rain and stuff we had this last winter, I think there was a lot of growth and maybe not too much maintenance on a lot of the wildlands, especially up in the hills. I’m not doing too much about it because I live in a city center, so there’s not a lot to catch fire around my house. But we have had our trees trimmed in preparation for it.” (Emma Tai, server, pictured right)

“We got all the information about fire hardening your house. And a lot of the things that they requested are just impossible with older houses, things like metal windows. Well, we live in a town where you can’t change your windows without design review, even if you can afford it, so hundreds of thousands of dollars of work to fire harden your house, it’s unrealistic.” (Donna Tai, retired, pictured left)

Rasheeda Gaines

“As a Californian, always worried about wildfires. Not much I can do. I’m not a homeowner, but I can share information about wildfires. If I see somebody like smoking in a heavily wooded area, I would say, ‘Hey, only you can prevent forest fires.'” (Rasheeda Gaines, custodial engineer)

Patrick Kitchin

“I don’t think about it much. I’m in an urban setting myself … but in our neighborhood, we were most concerned about gas shut-offs and knowing how to do all that stuff. So I bought a gas turn-off winch, put it by my gas meter… because we were told in an urban setting like that, you know, it’s not the earthquake that’s going to destroy your house. It’s rapid, rapid, rampant fires that happen around. … But we also have a go bag, water containers and a filtration system. We need to check [the gear] too, because we had some high protein bars but they’re now five or six years old.” (Patrick Kitchin, attorney)