Last night there was ash falling everywhere. There are fifty-five forest fires burning in Alaska right now. Thank goodness Alaska is so big (you can fit more than TWO Texases in here) or it would be just a cindery crisp. As it is, there's lots and lots of Alaska left.
I've heard that the closest fire is either 25 miles or 40 miles from my cabin. There is no fire protection in my area, so if it comes by here our only option is to RUN! My gut-level feeling is that it will be fine, that we aren’t going to have to evacuate, but the creepy End-of-the-World bilious yellow sky last night did bring that thought to mind. The flat, orange ball that was the sun (while it was visible at all) yesterday didn’t seem encouraging.
On the radio I heard that near Birch Lake the moose are coming out of the woods and hanging out on the roads, as they are trying to find clearings where they can both see and breathe.
Children, the elderly, and folks with respiratory problems (like me with asthma) are supposed to shut all the windows and stay home. Luckily my place has an air-exchange system, which means I can do that. It’s over 80° in here, but I can deal with that if I can breathe.
When I went to work yesterday, the old, leaky building where I teach was full of smoke. A storm a few weeks ago took out a window in the room I use, and it has plastic over it now, just stapled into place. This old house, that is now a music store, is at least sixty years old and as creaky and crooked as they come. The door doesn’t close to my room because the doorframe is so deformed from years of settling. All the windows are rather a formality, being that they rattle in their frames so loosely that the wind blows freely and cheerfully through the edges. So when I came to work yesterday and saw, in a 12 x 15 room, smoke hanging in the air, I wasn’t surprised.
It’s so thick out there that it’s like very dirty fog. Particulate levels are off the charts. I saw some breeze at the tops of the trees (the few trees I can actually see, these are the ones right by the house) but it has stopped. Reports are that the Steese Highway is closed, which is my way into Fairbanks, but they also say it has been open and closed and open and closed, all depending on what the fire is doing at the moment.
The fire closest to my home is the Boundary Fire.
The only way for me to know if I can get into town is go to and see. I’m betting I can.
Winds are supposed to become gusty today, up to 30mph, which I hope will blow AWAY from my area.
I’ll keep you posted.
