Escaping a Forest Fire !

Some of you know that my family has been traveling around USA in our RV. We started out on a 1-year journey around the country, then we liked it so much that we “just kept on goin’!” (In my best Forest Gump voice).

Now, we’re in our 4th year camping around the country as a happy traveling gypsy family.

Yesterday, we were in the middle of nowhere, on “The Loneliest Road in America” (Hwy 50) between Eureka and Austin, NV. It’s full of raw beauty, but not much else. To give you an idea, it takes a few hours to get to the nearest decent-sized supermarket. The nearby town has one operating business, a saloon… go figure!

Anyways, we were camping in a forested area tucked back off Hwy 50. I was inside the camper with my wife, working on the laptop and my son was outside playing monopoly at a picnic table with our friend, John (who was camping with us).

Suddenly, we hear insistent beeping. Then I see a white van charging through a cloud of dust, racing down the dirt road towards our campground. The horn kept blaring again and again as the van drove closer. Like Paul Revere, the man was on a mission to deliver a message.

He yelled “There’s a forest fire coming your way!” And the man was gone as fast as he came.

We looked up through the juniper pines and saw billows of smoke over the hillside.

Knowing that it usually takes us about a good hour to get our fifth wheel RV packed up, my mind raced “Do I get the camper ready? Is the fire really going to hit us? Do we just take the truck and leave the camper behind?”

My wife and I decided to leave our camper for a moment and just take the truck to see how bad the fire was over the hillside. It was less than a half mile away where we saw the other side of the hillside that had been burnt to a crisp. Flames were climbing up the hillside towards our camp. The Bureau of Land Management and Sheriff had just arrived on the seen. They told us to evacuate the campground. Since there was only one dirt road in and out of the camp, the fear was that we would be trapped if the wind kept pushing the fire towards us.

We hurriedly drove back to our campsite and told our friend John what we’d seen. We all began frantically packing up our camper, truck, and John’s vehicle.

As I mentioned before, it usually takes a good hour to get my camper ready. There are four slideouts in the camper that expand to make more room in the camper when it’s parked. This requires that we rearrange the furniture and belongings in the camper so the slideouts can close back up.

Items need secured, cabinets need fastened, windows need closed, everything needs put in its place or the camper won’t close and everything will be crashing around while in tow.

Plus on the outside of the camper, I still need to line up the truck, hookup to the gooseneck ball, inflate my rear suspension bags, make sure the awning is secure, etc.

On top of that, I usually have a full routine of checking oil, tire pressure of the truck and trailer tires, torquing lug nuts, etc.

But in this emergency situation, I had to mentally scan through the routine and just pick out the priority items to get us ready and out of there as soon as possible.

There was no time to plan, we were in reaction mode.

Luckily, our family and John worked together to get everything ready and we got out of there as planes were flying over us, dropping fire retardant. Crews in masks were already at the scene spraying and trying to prevent the spread of the fire.

As we drove down the highway, we noticed that the Sheriff patrol car was pulled aside with a big truck hauling cattle. We found out that the cattle trailer had a tire blowout. From what I understood, shrapnel of the hot steel belts of the tire
were projected onto the dry sage bushes along the roadside. This is what initiated the fire.

We relocated to another campsite a safe distance away. We were fortunate that the man in the white van gave us quick warning, and that this fire didn’t occur at night while we were sleeping.

Importantly, we were all safe. It’s one of those moments that forces me to be thankful. I also wanted to share this with you, so that you can remember to be thankful for just being safe, if nothing else.

Also, since this is a stock investing newsletter. I wondered if I could relate this situation to investing.

Surprisingly, I can. In life, and in investing, I believe that it’s best to have a plan ready. So even in times of emergency, we are not just emotional, stressed, and reacting. But, we have a routine or plan already in mind that we can scan through to pick out the priority tasks that need to be done.

In a falling stock market, some people may seem like it’s an emergency situation. Many panic and overreact. Instead, we should be proactive, get a plan in place, make a list of good companies that you’d like to buy, and write down the bargain price that you’d want to buy them at. You might even set limit orders to buy those good companies at your set bargain price.

Then, when the rest of the investors and market are panicking and falling, you can relax knowing that your plan is ready to buy good companies at discount prices. Even if the market keeps going down, you can buy the same good companies at an even bigger discount, or you can sleep well at night, knowing that this too will pass.

The market will eventually climb back up and the individual company stock that you own will eventually gravitate back towards its real value and you can set a limit order to sell at your realistic and desired selling price.

I hope this post finds you safe and well.

I know that sharing this type of life experience is not typical for my regular stock investing message. But if you found it to be helpful and interesting, please let me know, so I can continue to provide useful content for you 🙂

-Grant