Beijing on Puget Sound
Yesterday the smog index for pollution particulates here reached a number where air quality advisories were issued to the region’s asthma and emphysema sufferers. I hafta admit, the smoky haze on the South End looked worse than the days of burn barrels when everything from plastic to rubber was incinerated in 55 gallon drums. Now that the drums are plastic, the neighborhood pollution is way down, score one for polycarbonates!
We’ve just set the record for the longest drought in history here in the Pacific Northwest and we still have a month of typical drought to go. British Columbia is burning and the fires are only starting here in America and I’m not talking political partisanship. The smoke from those northern blazes has been pulled down here, giving us red ball sunsets but obscuring the Olympic Mountains all day long. Beijing was one tenth the pollution level we were. Another day and we’ll all be taking our hikes in surgical masks if we dare to venture outdoors at all.
If you walk through our back 40 you can see the remnants of the fire of the 1880’s. Charred cedar snags rise out of the nettle canopy and the stumps of old growth fir show blackened bark even to this day. My former neighbor used to pile brush and debris on our side of the property line and when I asked him about it, he told me it was a fire break. You know … for his property, not ours. Changed my opinion about him 180 degrees. Good fences might make good neighbors, but not fire breaks.
Nature, in case we didn’t know already, can turn on you fast. Some folks are muttering already about global warming — and of course it may be partly or mostly to blame — but even the cyclical explanation isn’t any comfort. Me, I’m just hoping those burn barrels are definitely a thing of the past.
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Tags: british columbia fires, smog alert