Our plan, when in Pollock Pines, is to go to Sebastopol. With a heat pump in Pollock Pines, I'd need a ~15-20kW generator (8 kW heat strips + 3 kW compressor + startup surge). We can do without heat strips if the outside temp is >40, then we're down to a reasonable size genset. There is a fireplace, but it really only works if you're sitting in front of it and the rest of the house gets cold as the heat escapes up the chimney. But, we're very fortunate to have another spot to evac to. Since it is a vacation home, in 13 years we've only left once - last winter during an extended outage (>12 hours!!) Old vacation houses in Pollock Pines don't have much insulation, the inside temp plummets!!
PG&E just changed the Sebastopol area from "Probably not affected" to "Shutdown probable" or something like that. I've got a 4kW generac that we purchased 20 years ago, after a 200 year flood event along the river left us without power for 10 days or so. That will provide us with (well) water and keep our fridge cold. I don't have a transfer switch, so extension cords will keep the fridge cold. I'll probably just run it enough to keep the fridge cold and the well tanks topped off. I had to run out for gas, quite a bit of people had the same thought this morning. I lent it to a friend 2 years ago in the aftermath of the Tubbs fire - we both had several evacuees in our houses, he had no power or natural gas. Hmm, something to think about for those that have NG fueled gensets.
I'm going to tap into my camper battery to run our cable modem/router etc. I'll use a small inverter and another extension cord. I haven't done the math yet but we should be good for a few hours tonight and tomorrow morning when the sun comes up. I've used the generator for this before, but it's too freaking loud to run all the time. Not sure how long Comcast will stay up on whatever backup they utilize, but i suspect it wont be much more than 8 hrs or so. Our "Landline" phone is actually VOIP (Internet phone), so it'll be down. We utilize different carriers (T-mobile and Verizon) on our cell phones to have a bit more safety margin
During last week's shutdown several cell towers went offline in Santa Rosa after the backup gens failed, ran out of fuel, etc. That caused a lot of people to have intermittent data / text connections. It seems a friend of mine in East Santa Rosa could call me but nothing else - the old 2G networks still working. Verizon plans to shut whatever is left of 2G voice in the next couple of months, if you're a Verizon customer (including MVNO's - Tracfone etc) and have an old phone you may need to update it soon!
Capable phones have "VoLTE", voice over LTE.
With current evacuation orders in Healdsburg and Windsor (~50k people), Hiway 101 is nearly gridlocked south of Windsor, very slow down to Santa Rosa.
More preps to take care of, back to work now . . .
