Friday The 13th - Oregon & California Are Burning

Wednesday afternoon is when I hit The Smoke.

I stopped to get a couple tires just outside Eugene, Oregon for the trailer - it was mid morning and as it turns out - I was their last job for the day - the air quality was so bad they decided not to send service trucks out to do roadside semi truck tire repairs.

Another Wildfire - this time in Oakridge was turning the sky into early darkness.

What followed was 300 miles of the worst air I have driven in over the last 15 years as
I headed south - all the way to Redding, California.

Shasta Lake from the I-5 bridge at 11:30 am
earlier today ….


Jim

Rough year again for fires.

Shasta Lake is LOW. Wow.

Some smoke moved back in here today. Not sure where it came from, but the wind usually pulls in whatever is west of here. Doesn't smell super strong, but the sky is yellowish again.

Saw a short news blurb last night that they arrested some guy who was intentionally lighting fires. Even tried to light fires behind firefighters so that their escape routes were cut off. He is a college professor.

i saw that on the news last night. as a former fire fighter [during the 70's and early 80's] that dimwit needs tied to a tree and...........
sorry, but that would be TOO GOOD of a punishment for him in my opinion !

I have been (and still am) skeptical
but for that last five years or so
there have been numerous articles in medical journals
claiming that tiny particles of air pollution less than 2.5 micro meters in diameter
can greatly increase the chance of Dementia in old age.

I am used to hearing about tiny particles causing lung damage
since my having to go through mandatory “Black Lung” safety training in the USA in 1974
and similar British Coal Board training in 1979

There sure has been a lot of long distance fire smoke transport this year,
both from west coast USA fires
and also central Canada smoke following winds south into eastern USA states.

I got some really awesome pics of the 40,000 acre fire burning 1/2 mile from my house, it actually did get on my churches property, I and several other members worked about 7 hours to save 100s of trees and the fence around the cemetery and softball field and church camp. The government only was concerned with saving the main building. We also have a spring in the woods we get water from, we put in a water tank truck and ran a hose and sprinkler system up into the area to make sure there was plenty of water to protect the water shed butt the forest service let the fire burn it all up without turning it on after they told us they would and promised we had nothing to worry about. We were checking on it every hour as it got closer but with 20 fire fighters around it was hard not to trust them, one time I went to check on it around noon, nothing was happening, 30 minutes later it I could see a 20,000 foot cloud of black smoke rising over there from my house 2 miles away so I went racing back over there with a huge water tank and a couple pumps in my truck and they had re-lit everything from a helicopter and those 20 firemen were watching all out water system, sprinklers hoses... being incenerated in the woods, I yelled at them that our water system was being burned up so then they called the same helicopters to put it out, they flew a couple hundred feet over my head about 20 times dumping water on our water supply area(between 300 and 3000 gallons at a time depending on witch helicopter was dumping, at least 2 Blackhawks, 1 Iroquois and a sky crane)while we was busy keeping the cemetery and fences and trees from burning up! Some other church members had to protect the church camp stuff at the other end of the property. I had to disobey the forest service, sheriff and national guard to get in there to do their job for them or it would have been scorched earth all around the building. We managed to save basically a false front of forest around the church property. They knew an inch of rain was coming that night and were trying to burn as many acres as possible before the rain got here.

After it is all said and done they will have already burned up at least 40,000 acres, blamed it on lightning and global warming and get a pile more funding because of the increase in "wild" fires. Every time it rains they say the weather is ruining their plans but at the same time they say it is a natural fire and they are trying to put it out. Initially the fire was contained to about 10,000 acres in a valley butt they did nothing to stop it for almost a month telling us it had nowhere to go, it probably would have never left that valley but they decided to fight fire with fire instead of water, that set several other valleys on fire and they still kept performing "aerial ignition" right up till the rain started pouring.

I live in area that is currently under Level 3 “GO NOW” evacuation orders. I’m staying. 56,000 acres last I heard. Schneider Springs, central Washington.

It was a go now order and we were out of there but knew we needed to get in, the guard was blocking the road, we went in a back way where they could see us in plain view go in, the forest service and sheriff came in and told us we couldn't be in there and we said it's our property (I am a member of the church) and we were going to protect it since they weren't. Some of the people on the ground actually helped us when they saw we were not leaving, one handed us a brand new fire hose like the one that got burned up and said "I heard about your fire hose, here, this fell off the back of my truck and I don't know where it ended up". The issue was never really the guys on the ground, they were just following orders, the problem is the higher ups.