Evacuating 200 head of livestock during brush fire season?

Sonya Heaney said:

Okay, so I'm back because I'm been thinking about this.

I'm guessing this is the story you found?

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Yep--I was searching for how sheep farmers managed near Armidale (I think, or Dubbo, but ended up deciding the exact location does not matter, but is currently set as Northern Tablelands) and found that article, found a few other leads, then figured I'd ask y'all. I suspect I was being too specific in my set-up and needed to think more broadly about all the ways this fictional vignette could work--Frank's suggestion about hobby farming is a good thing to consider, too. Might work better if this is a second income, but I don't want to get into back story for the snippet since it needs to be brief. Still, it's do-able.

The fires here in Southern California are terrifying, and I suspect we assume that there are parallels between our experiences, but maybe yes maybe no. I mean, even from one spot to the next can make a difference--a canyon is a bad place to be in a fire.

I've been in the middle of bushfires before, including this time, and my area of my city was surrounded by fire for weeks in early 2020. The thing to remember is that there's often *no warning*. You just up and go - especially in rural NSW, where the landscape is bone dry and the eucalyptus trees are so flammable. There'd be no time to worry about herding animals or transporting them somewhere.

It's true that some people had warnings and time to prepare over the 2019-20 season, but when the Orroral Valley fire flared up and took hold near my city this January people on some properties prepared for the worst, but the fire took off in a different direction and hit properties and towns where they weren't expecting it.

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Those look really helpful. thank you.

Watching the news reports it seemed the 2019/2020 fires kept going on and on, even in the same areas, for days--crawling along like, for example, the 2018 Woolsey Fire here, or the Springs Fire in 2014 which crawled down to the ocean and then the winds flipped and it crawled right back in toward us again. Fires do start out of the blue, but they can grow over days. That was my starting assumption, but I'll take a look at your links.

One of our big problems in our recent fire disaster was that the fires just kept on jumping containment lines and starting where people were unprepared.

In this year's fire season a friend of mine just opened the gates and got in her car and made a run for it, hoping her horses got out (they did).

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My sister has a farm up in the mountains above the central valley. Pigs, goats, sheep, poultry, some other stuff. Cats and dogs. She's needed to evacuate two or three times in the past ten years.

It is gripping to live through. Jumping lines is the sort of scenario I imagine, or shifting winds--you see the fire, smell the smoke, hell--the ash is falling on your property, and you watch like a hawk with your evacuation plan in place and hoping for the best. If things take a wrong a turn, that's bad.

Unimportant said:

I'd like him better if he dies trying to save the dog

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The thought had occurred. Poor pooch. Who knows, maybe this is the answer.

Thank you one and all--hopefully all the reps went through.

I've made notes. When I get back to this snatch of writing I will not only adjust it based on the feedback here, but also dive into youtube. This looks like a good start.