Clearly we’re going to need to practice our evacuation plan.
Yesterday afternoon a tornado warning popped up very unexpectedly. Not that they are ever expected, but even the morning’s weather forecast didn’t hint at this possibility. The path of the warning area included my cabin, so I got ready to inhabit my basement with the dogs for a while.
What a fiasco that turned out to be!
First, an explanation: my basement is really just a partially underground area for the utility mechanicals of my abode. The end with the door is about 2 feet below the ground surface. The back end of the area is about 5 feet underground. I don’t have stairs down into it, so that first nearly 2 foot step is a big one.
So here I am with a tornado warning and multiple dogs trying to get them into the basement. The puppies were afraid and didn’t want to jump down those two feet. So I got Baby Dog, my big dog, to go first. She went in, but as I was then trying to get Sparrow into the basement, Baby Dog jumped out, all the while Skye is practicing his mule impersonation, planting his feet and pulling backwards for all he’s worth. Before I knew it I was as tangled as a Gordian knot with leashes and dogs.
The tornado warning expired before we eventually got in there. Fortunately, the tornado never touched ground. But if this had been an actual emergency, we’d all have been killed before I got the dogs into that basement. Clearly we have some work to do before the next one.
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4 comments:
Clearly luck was on your side
. Clearly you needs a few trial run with the dogs.
Up here, it was two massive t-storms, the first one brought 2-3 minutes of steady hail. What a racket. In Northern Pike, one the resort got flooded out during dinnertime.
Try something like this with CATS, Carolyn (which, fortunately I've never had to face). Most of the time, I don't even know where they are, let alone try to herd them into the basement.
A friend of mine had her cat die when she had a house fire and the cat, rather than run outside and face all the fire department commotion, ran under a table and hid. They found the carcass after the fire was extinguished.
Cathy: Yes, I was lucky this time.
Scott: I can't even attempt evacuation with the cats. If it comes to it, I guess I'll just open the doors and hope they find their own evacuation routes. For one thing, I never get enough notice to gather them up too. A couple of minutes is usually all there is. Sometimes barely enough for me to get into the basement.
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