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Today, I feel queasy, my throat hurts, and my lungs are congested. I am experiencing these symptoms because Eugene's air smells nauseating, looks orange, and is currently rated as among the unhealthiest on earth due to the Cedar Creek Fire, which is fifty miles to the east and has been burning for six weeks. It has thus far destroyed 122,000 acres, killed a 27-year-old Michigan firefighter, and is expected to burn until the arrival of winter rains. The air quality for Oakridge, the town closest town to the fire, is 566, which is off the chart (see below). When Oakridge was placed under a mandatory evacuation order last month, most of its 3,200 residents came to Eugene, and their pets and livestock were housed at the Lane County Fairgrounds.
Two years ago, the nearby McKenzie River Valley was hit by the Holiday Farm Fire (named after a Christmas tree farm). That fire burned 173,000 acres, damaged four rural communities, and destroyed the 600-resident town of Blue River (see video). Many Blue River residents camped in Eugene parking lots, and talks about rebuilding the town are still in progress.
The Eugene area had no large area fires last year, but we got weeks of off-and-on smoke from fires in southern Oregon and northern California. Major fires are new to the area, but are expected to become larger and more frequent. Summers here have always been dry, but they're getting drier. When Peggy and I moved here in 1986, the average daily high for the hottest month of the year was 79 F (26 C). It is now 85 F (29.5 C) with another five degree increase expected by mid-century. Four of Eugene's five hottest summers have occurred since 2015. Last summer, the airport thermometer hit 111 F (44 C).
What is America doing about the problem? Not much. One-third of Americans (nearly all of them Christian Republicans) either deny that climate change is real, or think God is causing it, and we can only end it by begging God's forgiveness for the sins of abortion, liberalism, gay rights, secular schools, gun laws, vaccination mandates, interracial marriage, mail-in voting, Hispanic immigration, and the theft of the 2020 presidential election.
According to the deniers, only a complete fool would believe that the world is getting hotter when snow falls every winter. They say that if it were real, the Bible would have predicted it, and Donald Trump wouldn't have accused the Chinese of lying about it. Sean Hannity, America's most popular conservative media personality, went so far as to say that he wishes climate change were real because he hates cold weather. Perhaps no one has told him of the downsides.
| Quality Index (AQI) Values |
Levels of Health Concern | Colors |
| When the AQI is in this range: | ..air quality conditions are: | ...as symbolized by this color: |
|---|---|---|
| 0-50 | Good | Green |
| 51-100 | Moderate | Yellow |
| 101-150 | Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups | Orange |
| 151 to 200 | Unhealthy | Red |
| 201 to 300 | Very Unhealthy | Purple |
| 301 to 500 | Hazardous | Maroon |
9 comments:
Sadly familiar. We had a firestorm here which had our air quality in the hazardous range for several weeks. Billions of animals died in the blazes, which we could watch from our front veranda.
And yes, we have our climate change deniers here too.
We're in deep doodoo. The smoke here too from Cedar Creek fire has been bad. This weekend, the temps in Portland are predicted to be near 90 degrees. This is mid October. Where do we go anymore to recreate? Opal Creek, my favorite hiking place in Oregon is a burned stick forest, ravaged by the Beachie Creek Santiam Canyon Fire of 2020, that killed five people up the Little North Fork, all along which were some of my favorite places. I can only describe that event as a fire hurricane. One minute my neighbors and I were standing in the driveway wondering where this predicted wind event was, and the next, here came high winds, a black orange sky and ash was falling like rain. Now the Cedar Creek fire burning all around Waldo Lake, my favorite place to go mid to late August, early September in Oregon. There's no more normal Oregon weather. It's gone. The change to me is dramatic and obvious. Others laugh it off but I wonder how long they'll be laughing and denying.
I hope you get some respite soon.
I have no hope for climate/ environment/ mass extinction.
I'm sorry you have to put up with it all. Our really bad fire seasons kill people through poor air quality, increase stillbirths, kill firefighters......
and the band plays on
Thanks, everyone. Your compassion helps. I know, Kylie and Elephant's Child, that some of your Australian fires make the fires in Oregon pale into insignificance. The state of California also has such fires, and while the national news media makes much of that state's problem, it often dispenses with news of Oregon fires by showing highlighted areas on a map for no more than five seconds before moving on to detailed coverage of the latest asinine remarks of the Elon Musks, Donald Trumps, and Conyea Wests of the world. Yet, if you're the one breathing the smoke and knowing that--as Strayer remarked--the places you love most are being burned to the ground while you sit helplessly in rage and grief because of the thousands of lives of one kind or another that are sacrificed every passing second on the altar of human greed, improvidence, and callousness, the problem seems considerably meaningful than what Britney Spears just said about her father.
Today, Eugene's air quality is in the unhealthy range yet again, but air quality in Oakridge is three times as bad. As I sit literally gagging off-and-on and feeling unhappy about the prospect of another day spent breathing air that stinks, I wonder how Oakridge residents can bear it. I know that some of them are out delivering mail, pumping gas (Oregon has no self-serve gas/petrol stations), replacing roofs, etc, but I also know that others are being severely challenged emotionally and physically. If Oakridge were a wealthy community, many of its people go to the Coast (a two hour drive) for a few days or weeks, but Oakridge is an economically-depressed area that is heavily dependent upon logging in the very forest that is now burning. Peggy and I, on the other hand, could afford to stay on the Coast for a short time, but, as some of you know, we're tied down by the medical needs of a cat. Besides, I have my own medical issues that make overnighters a challenge.
What I could do would be to buy air filters, and if I really, really knew that almost every summer for the rest of my life would be like the last few summers, I surely would, but it's hard to admit that, yes, this is it. From now on, winter days will be short, cold, and rainy as always--but with more flooding--but that from this point forward, summers will also be too unpleasant to enjoy (in their case from hot weather and smoke), and even autumn, that formerly delightful season, will henceforward be so smoky that it will be unsafe to go outdoors. Although I think it almost certain that these things are true, I hold back from doing everything possible to ameliorate the problem because doing so would feel like surrender.
I feel sorry for younger people because for the rest of their lives, they're going to have to deal with civilization threatening climate disasters that their elders could have prevented but chose not to. Many, perhaps most, Americans can't remember what life was like in America prior to the attack on 9/11, and, in a few years, other young Americans won't remember a time when half of the country didn't hate and mistrust the other half with all its being, and when megafires, extreme heat, extreme flooding, and so forth were the exception rather than the norm.
Arrggh, this is so sad to read, you always lived in what seemed to me a kind of paradise compared to the built up dour area we live in. I feel for you both, climate change is here right now and I fear it may well be too late for all of us. On that happy note, much love. *Beams a smile out regardless* X
I am so sorry Snow what you are going through. Aside from air filters in the house so you aren’t breathing in particulates, car air filters can get clogged too
If it isn’t firestorms it’s hurricanes and flooding. My aunt was hit hard in coastal Florida
Sadly you are spot on about the ‘Christian’ repulsives.
First off, according to NBC News: "A string of wildfires darkened skies Wednesday and Thursday in the Pacific Northwest, where residents of the normally lush, green region experienced the world's worst air pollution."
"you always lived in what seemed to me a kind of paradise compared to the built up dour area we live in."
Ruby, after living in Oregon for two years, Peggy and I moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where person after person asked why on earth we would leave a beautiful place like Oregon for a homely place like Minnesota. This was true, actually, of the countryside, but I liked Minneapolis a lot, the truth being that big cities have cultural, educational, and healthcare advantages that smaller cities lack (Eugene's metro area is 400,000). I should think that Manchester has many such advantages. When I think about what it would be like to live in England, the biggest problem that comes to mind is that you're much further North than Eugene is. Manchester is at the 55th parallel; Eugene at the 44th; and I grew up in subtropical Mississippi at the 31st parallel. Such things matter a lot to me because I HATE short winter days. On the other hand, the natural setting of your nation is lovely, and I would go crazy studying your long human history.
"If it isn’t firestorms it’s hurricanes and flooding. My aunt was hit hard in coastal Florida."
I have a sister in Pensacola, but she didn't sustain any damage this go round.
"Sadly you are spot on about the ‘Christian’ repulsives."
They claim that no atheist can be moral because the only people who have reason to live moral lives are the ones who fear hell. I think this says worlds about what kind of people they are--that and the fact that they unashamedly violate every principle that they claim to hold dear while supporting politicians who are even worse than themselves are. I am sad to say that I have gone from simply disrespecting such people to actually hating them because I see them as a grave threat to the well-being of this nation and the world itself. To be clear, I am not talking about all Christians but the MAGA crowd.
The video is a foretaste of what's in store for this planet in a few decades hence. It's far too late to escape this race to escape.
We reap what we sow. Man-made Hell on Earth.
The inventiveness of humans over the past few centuries is now biting back. The creation of many of Life's essential ways of living and destruction continues apace. We cannot live without them; nor with them, it seems.
Yes, I'm a miserable old Doomsayer. Sorry,but that's how I see it.
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