Today has just been creepy. Never in my life have I lived somewhere that I had to be afraid of wild land fires. Tucson would have fires, but up in the mountains. Seattle would get smoke from China or BC, but no fire. Yesterday was very windy, gusting to 37 out in the hinterlands. A fire got started south and west of us in the afternoon. We saw the smoke plume on the way to Safeway.
This morning we were covered in smoke.
We live up where it says Town and Country. The Gray fire is the one that's feeding us smoke, it's in a place called Medical Lake. Last time I checked it was 9,500 acres, and 0% contained. At least 185 homes burned to the ground last night. Currently I90 is closed between Tyler and Sprague because the fire has moved south and is on both sides of the freeway.
It was a fast moving fire. People got the Level 3 alert (get out now) and had to go. Honestly, I don't know how people recover from that.
So, we spent the day taking pictures of our furniture, annotating where it came from, what it cost when we could remember, and emailing photos and words to a new folder in yahoo mail. We've signed up for text messaging emergency alerts and talked about our evacuation plan. It's a depressing subject. So much of what we have is irreplaceable. That's true for most people. I have 15 years of photo albums, real photos on paper in spiral bound books with many words. Irreplaceable. Due to their large size, I can't scan them.
So, that's my tiny local fire and whining about it. Meanwhile, this is Kelowna, B.C.
Yellowknife in the Northern Territories of Canada has had to evacuate due to fire. It seems like much of the planet is burning. In California, they're expecting Hurricane Hilary and 2 to 3 year's worth of rain in short order. There will be flooding.
However, the oil companies have said they have to put the brakes on de-carbonizing because it will hurt share holder value.
We've been sitting way to close to the Medical Lake fire, it's a really scary thing to watch and think about....Not as scary as it is for the poor people who live in Medical lake, but, enough for me. We're just glad the wind changed direction. Interesting, though, that Fox News reported the fire as NORTH of Spokane when it's clearly south of it.
ReplyDeleteThe natural (and sometimes man created) disasters are just horrible this year. There are very few places that were safe this summer. I think all of us everywhere need to be ready to leave. So very sad and scary.
ReplyDeleteTravel to the interior of southeast/central BC has been restricted due to the wildfires. It's not the fires, it's the magnitude of the fires that is so scary. Canada has always had wildfires. I've lived in Alberta for 53 years and have never seen smoky skies like I've seen these past few years.
ReplyDeleteScary to have a large fire so close to you. It does seem like the planet is fighting back. I worry about what the fires are doing to wild animals -- the deer and bear and moose and birds.
ReplyDeleteI'd do my best to scan all the old photos, and if scanning won't work, at least take pictures of the album pages. I keep copies of all my old photos digitally in case something like a fire strikes us.
seems like the whole world is on fire. it's so hot and dry that the least spark and you've got a fist moving wildfire. scary times. and of course the oil companies put money over planet and lives. what they think they are going to do with that money when everything burns up and the planet no longer supports human life is beyond me. the rich think they'll be spared? that or already dead and then they won't care then either.
ReplyDeleteIt's downright frightening out there. My cousin, his wife and adult children left Yellowknife last Friday and made it safely to Alberta. So far the fire hasn't reached the outskirts of the city, but it is expected to do so by the weekend. They are fortunate in they own property in Edmonton, a condo purchased when their daughters were in university. But it is the irreplaceable items that mean the most. I do hope they are able to go home unscathed but so many can't and won't. The small town of Enterprise was entirely wiped out.
ReplyDeleteScary to have a wildfire so close. I have never experienced that. We had a few bad air days (orange/red) here in NC due to NW winds bringing smoke from Canadian wildfires all the way here, but it's been good lately. I'm catching up on posts and hoping that things are better out your way by now.
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