Looking north up Main Street/Highway 101 in Willits Friday afternoon, I saw some drivers with their headlights on. This is all smoke from thousands of acres of forest fires, not fog, and it continues to fill Little Lake Valley with hazardous air, and in temperatures near 90 degrees. Like the sign says, there seems to be "No Exit", no end in sight.
Some smoke comparison shots are on my Overflow blog, linked here.
8 comments:
Good Heavens, I can smell the smoke all the way down here. It is most unpleasant to have to breath it and it plays havoc with my eyes.
Are they just letting the fires burn themselves out or are they actually trying to stop them?
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Julie, they are trying desperately to stop them! There aren't enough trained personnel and specialized equipment to fight them all simultaneously! The efforts have been heroic - please read my story posted yesterday for an example. Thanks so much for your visit.
This is one time we won't say, Just take a deep breath. Oi, it must be awful.
Do they take volunteers (untrained ones) to fight the fires?
When I lived on a kibbutz there was a blaze in the Martin Buber Forest. We piled onto a wagon in back of a tractor to get up there. All I had was a stick with a rubber flap on the end to strike the burning earth. That was back in '68, pretty primitive.
Thank you dear Elaine, for letting us live this with you.
It must be awful. Hope you are holding up. I love how you managed to get the no exit sign in this photo.
Oh, Elaine, that looks horrible. I hope you're not doing badly in all that smoke.
Elaine, the smoke up here is so bad I can't see across the canyon. It is almost as bad as when we had our own fire here 5 years ago.
The smoke from the fires continues to drift south. The sky over the Bay Area today looks almost like the sky you show in Willits.
"Louis" can only imagine how fatigued those fighting all those fires must be.
I've been thinking of you guys affected by the smoke and fires. I was checking out the Kate Wolf Memorial Music Fest page to see who would be playing this year (wish I were going!) and noticed they are going forward with the festival as planned and have seemingly lucked out re. air quaility. I hope it remains so.
Living in the land of shake and bake, where fire is part of the natural ecosystem, this has been a California way of life for centuries. . .but it seems to me it has been somewhat different in the past 10 years. More frequent. More severe. Exaserbated by plagued trees in the south and more damage as folks have continued to build more, and rebuild after burns in the hills all over the state.
Hope the air quality improves quickly for you!
Kim
Seattle Daily Photo
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