need help convincing my wife to bug out

[phobos]

There is a train derailment 3 miles from my house. The government has only evaluated 1mile so she don't won't to leave. I'm at work. How should I try to talk her in to leasing to my judgment and not the government?

[Morning Sunshine]

what is in the train?  is there a chemical spill? a risk of fire?  why should she - or anyone within the 1-mile radius - bugout?  answering these questions could change it from "my husband is paranoid" to "there could be a serious problem here"

[Cedar]

Tell her to take the day and go window shopping for new shoes?

If it is this one: Freight train derails, catches fire in NE Indiana. LIGONIER, Ind. (AP) — The state environmental agency says a freight train that derailed and caught fire in rural northeastern Indiana was hauling hazardous substances. The train derailed about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday near the Noble County town of Ligonier, about 40 miles northwest of Fort Wayne. Noble County Sheriff Doug Harp tells WANE-TV that about a half dozen homes have been evacuated. Indiana Department of Environmental Management spokeswoman Amy Hartsock says tankers carrying molten sulfur and the gasoline additive toluene derailed. She says authorities evacuated a half-mile area as a precaution. Hartsock says firefighters are still battling a blaze emitting yellowish smoke more than three hours after the derailment. Officials also are trying to determine whether foam on the nearby Elkhart River might have come from the train.

Ask her to look up molten sulfur and when sulfur burns in air it produces sulfur dioxide. In water, this gas produces sulfurous acid and sulfites which at high concentrations these acids harm the lungs, eyes or other tissues.

And to look up toluene. Toluene should not be inhaled due to its health effects. Low to moderate levels can cause tiredness, confusion, weakness, drunken-type actions, memory loss, nausea, loss of appetite, and hearing and color vision loss. These symptoms usually disappear when exposure is stopped. Inhaling high levels of toluene in a short time may cause light-headedness, nausea, or sleepiness. It can also cause unconsciousness, and even death.

Tell her you love her and you want her to be safe, JUST IN CASE it heads her way and you are worried you are not there to protect her.

Cedar

[Mr. Bill]

Norfolk Southern Corp. issued the following update on the northeast Indiana trail derailment about 11:25 a.m. Tuesday:

    An eastbound Norfolk Southern train derailed at 4:40 a.m. Tuesday morning west of Ligonier, Ind.
    The train consisted of three locomotives and 59 freight cars.
    Sixteen cars were empty and 43 were loaded. Norfolk Southern is working to determine how many cars have derailed.
    No injuries have been reported.
    A fire has been reported at the derailment site, and we are working with local emergency responders to contain it.
    The train was carrying a variety of commodities including the two products classified as hazardous materials, molten sulfur and toluene. Molten sulfur is used for making products such as plastics, dyes, detergents, pharmaceutical products, and fertilizer. Toluene is used for making products such as paint thinner, fingernail polish, and rubber.
    Track speed for freight trains along this route is 50 mph.
    An average of 90 to 100 trains use this rail line daily.

Additional updates will be provided as new information becomes available.

[Mr. Bill]

Noble County train derailment causes home evacuations; hazardous toxins on board

UPDATE: The original area evacuated was a half mile in each direction, but was downgraded to 300 yards. Six homes were evacuated in total. Water pollution remains the biggest concern, but not as big of a problem as they originally thought.

[nelson96]

Tell her to take the day and go window shopping for new shoes?

If it is this one: Freight train derails, catches fire in NE Indiana. LIGONIER, Ind. (AP) — The state environmental agency says a freight train that derailed and caught fire in rural northeastern Indiana was hauling hazardous substances. The train derailed about 5:30 a.m. Tuesday near the Noble County town of Ligonier, about 40 miles northwest of Fort Wayne. Noble County Sheriff Doug Harp tells WANE-TV that about a half dozen homes have been evacuated. Indiana Department of Environmental Management spokeswoman Amy Hartsock says tankers carrying molten sulfur and the gasoline additive toluene derailed. She says authorities evacuated a half-mile area as a precaution. Hartsock says firefighters are still battling a blaze emitting yellowish smoke more than three hours after the derailment. Officials also are trying to determine whether foam on the nearby Elkhart River might have come from the train.

Ask her to look up molten sulfur and when sulfur burns in air it produces sulfur dioxide. In water, this gas produces sulfurous acid and sulfites which at high concentrations these acids harm the lungs, eyes or other tissues.

And to look up toluene. Toluene should not be inhaled due to its health effects. Low to moderate levels can cause tiredness, confusion, weakness, drunken-type actions, memory loss, nausea, loss of appetite, and hearing and color vision loss. These symptoms usually disappear when exposure is stopped. Inhaling high levels of toluene in a short time may cause light-headedness, nausea, or sleepiness. It can also cause unconsciousness, and even death.

Tell her you love her and you want her to be safe, JUST IN CASE it heads her way and you are worried you are not there to protect her.

Holy cow! . . .  My wife would have been three states away from it by now and would have been the one calling me frantically.

Good luck phobos.

[phobos]

I don't think she is in danger right noe. But she has berthing problems so if the winds change she could have problems.

[Cedar]

Another option maybe, call one of her friends to take her somewhere to get her out of there? Like to a lunch?

Cedar

[Dainty]

Sometimes the approach of trying to scare someone into taking precautions results in more, not less, resistance. Cedar is coming up with some excellent suggestions so that your wife might view it more as an opportunity to take advantage of the situation to do something enjoyable rather than sit at home with an eye on the wind.

Do you by any chance have a respirator/gas mask with unopened cartridges as part of your preps? If so, it's possible that if things do get bad there she could use the mask to avert breathing issues until she can get to an environment with clean air again. I wear mine as needed for similar reasons (see avatar). Of course, you'd want to be careful not to scare her further away with it! You want to present it more like "this makes life so much easier" rather than "you life is in danger, you should be concerned."

[phobos]

We are going to spend the night at her brother's house. The news said that if the wind changes they will evacuated more. But we all now how the government dose with evaluationions (Katrina).

[Cedar]

And she was OK with volunteering to Bug Out/evacuate? You might even use the term BO to get her used to the terms you might use to associate the word with the action. Then they might not be so scary.

Cedar

[reefmarker]

While going to work one morning at 4am, I was greeted by a major 4 lane road blocked by sheriffs deputies and a slew of ambulances rushing in the general direction of the blocked road.  Turns out a train with lots of chlorine had crashed with some already known fatalities.  I turned around and went home.  The 1 mile evacuation occured due entirely to smell.  If you lived within a mile it smelled bad enough that you wanted to leave once you heard there was a problem (a guy from work lived right at the 1 mile point and he said it was really bad in his garage that morning when he left for work - single guy no one else at his place).  We were just outside of the 5 mile evacuation circle.

They never went to 5 miles, but my wife was immediately ready to leave due to having small kids.  She probably would have dug her heels in to stay if not for the potential the kids could get hurt.  It's weird how you want to protect your house unless you think there is something worth more to protect (the kids).  Plus, in this case there was nothing we could have done but left to protect anything. 

The 1 mile and 3 mile evacuations went pretty well due to low population density, but had it went out to 5 miles it would have been alot more people.  Both because a 5 mile circle is close to 20 times bigger than a 1 mile circle and due to it being alot more urban starting about 3 miles out.  We decided we didn't want to get stuck in a traffic jam so we started the weekend early hooked up the camper and went to the beach!      The 1 mile evacuation lasted for 2 weeks!  9 dead, 250 injured.

One thing that most don't consider is the inability of help to get to you.  The firefighters were not capable of driving into a cloud of chlorine to rescue anyone.  The entire world came with semiloads of equipment to use, but a 30 minute air bottle doesn't get you very far when the cloud is huge and walking is the only way to get anyplace.  Animals left behind were left to dehydrate to death because no one was able to go turn them loose or go gather them up.11114

[soccer grannie]

Oh, I remember that morning and the weeks that followed.

[phobos]

She was not happy about leaving but she was not to upset. We can home this morning and I went to work. We keep in touch. The evacuation zone has just been extended to2.5 miles. We are going to spend to night in a hotel.

[phobos]

We made it to the hotel fine. On the way here she smelled the smoke. She stated coughing andchest burned.

[Cedar]

Lesson taken ?

Cedar

[phobos]

She said that she now understands why I prep. I did a full right up at my preparedness blog. http://www.thecontingencylifestyle.com/2012/03/30/had-a-real-bug-out-this-week/

[technicalanarchy]

I think if one had to stay in in a situation like that or when you leave be sure and turn off the hvac unit.

Glad all went well.

One thing people dont realize is when a situation gets bad enough to ev it gets bad quick. Easier to stay ahead of the game.

[Dainty]

Glad you got through the situation safely, phobos, and that your wife has a better understanding on the importance of being prepared.

I'd encourage you to look into getting a respirator or two, particularly because your wife's condition makes air pollution more risky for her than the average population. I started a thread on them here, and you can have a basic setup for under $20.

For me, when air pollution reaches orange ("unhealthy for sensitive groups") it potentially necessitates evacuation as it seeps into my living area, overwhelms my air purifiers, and I begin to have difficulty breathing. In the past these events triggered a frantic rush to load up the car and leave and quickly as possible while I struggled for air through a wet cloth in a rapidly degenerating situation. My mask changed all that. Nowadays what was previously a life-threatening scenario for me is a mere annoyance as I don my mask and either wait for the air to clear or leisurely begin evacuation procedures.

I don't know your wife's exact situation but from what you've mentioned it sounds like one of these is likely to end up being useful.

[phobos]

I am picking up a par of respirators tomorrow at the hardware store. thanks for all the advice and concern. this forum has the best group of people on the internet. And thank you to all of you that looked at my blog.