Glad they got it contained pretty quickly. I was looking at moving to the western US a few years ago (Idaho area), having a true fire season is such a foreign concept to most of the people on this board, as we don't really have that barring major drought conditions in the eastern US.
Please don't let it discourage you! You will be among people who have lived with it all their lives: a fire evacuation, to them/us, is the equivalent of a hurricane evacuation on the Gulf Coast, but less frequent, I think.
Does it really matter if everything's lost to water or flames? You still lose everything.
It's necessary here to be a little more proactive (these
tips are good anywhere), and aware, able to clear out before official evacs are called and move fast: wildfires are a lot more speedy than the weather sometimes.
Don't know about Idaho, but I've been in west central Oregon for seven years and last year's Labor Day fires were beyond anything I've seen here, enhanced by that cold weather system that dropped down from Canada, setting up strong winds through the passes. Most fire seasons thus far have been smaller, just the same grim thing that comes each year like hurricane season or Dixie's two tornado seasons. California does have it worse annually, I think.
And from what's going on so far this year, it's likely gonna be another bad one for much of the West.
I got a kick out of some of the comments in this thread. Just for the record, tornadoes terrify me (and other severe weather in Alabama can be scary, too!). Give me volcanoes any day!
Earthquakes can be more serious, especially if the "really big one" ever hits in our lifetime. But so far, the strongest earthquake I've experienced was a M3-something, while living in upstate New York in the early 1980s. It was centered in New Hampshire, sounded like a truck going by, and a cabinet door opened (very flimsy building); no damage, though.
They can happen
anywhere.
Salem, north of us, is at a higher overall risk per FEMA's
new map, but that's because of weather events as well as earthquakes. And volcanoes aren't that much of a risk, though still present (eruptions happen so rarely).
Didn't check out California or Idaho.