Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

The summer fire season that had been so quiet was finally made un-quiet with a large (several hundred acre) grass fire on the mountain on the edge of town. I live far from that area and there was never any threat at all to my own property, but it does make one think about fire issues.

Short of installing an in-home sprinkler system (which is actually done in some new construction) some sort of home fire-fighting setup may be worth investigating. Every yahoo has a hose bib and a garden hose coiled up in their yard. Im not necessarily thinking of external fire issues (which I’ve mentioned in the past) but rather internal ones…like your toaster oven setting your kitchen on fire, that sort of thing. It would be nice to take off a line from the water pipes and have a hose bib under the sink or in a closet where I could leave a small coil of compact, flat hose.

But, realistically, I need to upgrade the fire extinguishers both in size and quantity. We have the usual small fire extinguishers scattered around the house but I think I’ll upgrade to the larger, more ….capacitious… extinguishers.

The other thing I’d like to pick up are a couple of stirrup pumps. If you’re not familiar with these things you should take the time to check them out. They were popular in London during the blitz. They are hand-operated pumps that look a lot like a bicycle pump. You stick it in a bucket, theres a stirrup that hangs outside the bucket for you to stand on and hold the pump steady, and then you pump with one hand and aim the hose with the other. The idea was that when water pressure was down (or pipes destroyed) you could grab a bucket of water and pump the water yourself in a high pressure stream to where you needed it. Ideally, someone would grab a bucket and refill yours as you use it. Major Surplus used to sell these things all the time. I spent a bit of time Googling away and discovered that even the surplus ones are difficult to find and there are no newly manufactured ones. There are stirrup pumps used in boating for bailing out the boat, but they aren’t designed for high-stream pressure.

How hard can it be to find a firefighting stirrup pump, right? You just whip out the ol’ Google and let ‘er rip, right? Wrong. I found a couple military surplus ones but finding a new one was quite difficult. I found one source but its built in Germany and I haven’t found a US source yet. I would think that with a handful of Home Depot plumbing parts you could probably build one of your own.

The old Forest Service-style backpack system is still available and might be useful but the stirrup pump would allow you to simply move to another full bucket whereas the Indian pump would require you to refill its reservoir. Hmmmm..

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Im still trying out the Platypus water bottle. In digging through the honeymoon pictures from Alaska it turns out theres a picture of me examining the ranger’s bottle. I’m funny that way, when I see a gathering of people in an outdoor environment I always wind up checking out their gear to see who has the WalMart made-in-China bags and who has the London Bridge stuff. Anyway, thus far Im pleased with the Platypus bottle, but Im still on the fence about how I like it more/less than the hard Nalgene bottle.

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Everyone’s friend and career scumbag Charles Schumer made a comment about the IndyMac institution a few weeks ago and, according to some folks, triggered a bank run that left the institution short of cash and a target of seizure by the feds. Chuck, whom I have actually listened to in person, dismissed the notion that he had any hand in the bank run and that if IndyMac had been playing straight this wouldn’t have happened. Hmmmm. Im not going to get into Schumers long history of camera-hogging sound-biting self-promotion, nor am I going to get into IndyMacs lending practices…all I want to point out is that a bank doesn’t have to be on the ropes to fail. All you need is to start a rumour or buzz that its about to fail, people line up for their money, other people see the lines and jump in also, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Do I think you should not use banks at all? No, I don’t. But I think that you may want to keep a good chunk of your money on hand in your gun safe so if your bank does shut its doors for a week you’re not screwed too badly. Besides, at 1.5% interest why would you keep your money in the bank anyway?