Well, those of you who have visited my website know that my current residence is in Apex, NC… and my wife, kids, dog, and I are among the 17,000 residents of the very same town who were ordered to leave our homes last night because of the toxic waste cloud and fire. Without time enough even to stock up on underwear and clothing for the baby, I didn’t rescue any of my train stuff. Clearly I got the top 3 on my checklist (kids, dog, and–if room–wife), so I’m happy about that. Feeling sad about all of our things left behind, and somewhat guilty for worrying about material things (like my model railroad). This is my second evacuation in 2 years (2 years ago I lived on Florida’s embattled east coast).
It looks as if we were upwind of the plume the entire time so I don’t believe we got any contamination, but that remains to be seen. The all-clear hasn’t come yet. Ironic, since I just put what I considered to be the almost-final touches on the layout this week. Makes you think. Should we have sustained significant contamination and the layout needs to go, then I’ll be hard at work on the next one as soon as the insurance check clears.
Bummer,…I also live in a place that has lots of evacuations due to all the petroleum plant releases on the Houston ship channel…it’s a scary thought to know that things that you work your whole life for can be taken away from you overnight…the bright side is you might get a “new and improved” MRR out of it…the sad note is that most of the insurance companies can take from 3 to 7 years to pay-up…We just went thru a gas well fire that burned for a month before they put it out…I didn’t have to evacuate but everyone in a 1/4 radius that was 1/2 mile from my house did and they couldn’t get home until the fire was put out…even though i didn’t have to evacuate it left a white ash on everything that took days to clean up and do you think the company that owned the gas well was concerned?..NOT!..chuck
P.S…I don’t think you’d better show your wife your post…looks like the mak’ins for many nights in the dog house…LOL
this is something everyone should have in their backyard…
Dave, sorry to hear that. It was news first thing this am here in High Point. I didn’t know that you lived in Apex, but I know that SilverSpike is close to that area.
My only near-evacuation experience was 1979 when TMI nearly melted - I’m less than 50 miles as the crow flies from Harrisburg - and that would have been big. Best of luck.
That’s got to be a bummer, Dave. If it’s any small consolation, I am a NY State certified Hazmat technician and a former Fire Chief. In my limited experience most evacuations (or in your case, the larger part of most evacuations) are precautionary and there is no contamination for most of the residents. In the case of a large or chemical fire there may be ash. We will all pray that the wind does not change.
If you had time to close all of your windows and doors and turned off any central HVAC then you increased your chances of keeping the house clean. Good luck to you, the kids, the dog, the wife and your layout.
I hope it concludes quickly and well for you, Dave. Look for the goldfish. If it is still swimming, you and the trains should be fine. Wife, too, natch.
[#ditto] Sorry to hear of your dissrupted weekend over there neighbor. Hope all gets back to normal today and no damage done to your home. Makes one wonder about about the price we pay for “progress”. By the way, I have great admiration for the job you did on your layout. I started an N scale layout back in the 60’s on a 5x9 sheet of plywood but only got as far as enough track layed to run a couple of trains. Was in the Navy back then and between Nam and transfering every 2 years, never came to getting it finished. Have a room in our home now for a layout and intend to build in N scale again after 40 some years of HO. Your layout conveys that N can be just as impressive as HO. Thanks and good luck, Ken
Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers! We were allowed back into our home at 9:00AM this morning. All seemed to be in order. We’ve got the house wide open in spite of temperatures in the low 50s and rain just to air it out.
By 10:00AM my boys and I were running trains on the N scale Middle Division.
Another happy ending for our family… We survived hurricane season 2004 in Melbourne, Florida with very minimal damage as well (Charely, Frances, and Jeanne), although not all our neighbors were as lucky. We have certainly been blessed each time we’ve had to flee our home; it’s always been right where we left it!