Life in the Fire Zone

There is a lot of news right now about fires in many parts of the world. I am just back from helping a friend move back onto his property burned last year. I want to let you know in some way how this feels. These photos are from one remote mountain area, but the story is the same all over Northern California, Oregon, much of Canada, Australia, Portugal. Hawaii is starting their journey into the fire life. We have not been good stewards of our wild lands, and Global Climate change is real. 

I think that it is difficult to deeply understand what living in these areas means. We may have experienced, or had a friend that experienced a single family fire, but until you spend time in one of these areas it is hard to understand the way it feels to be in, to live in a vast area that has been seared.

These photos are not meant to be the best photographs ever taken.  And the chronography is backwards. The first  photos you see are towards the end of my journey. Much of the time I just shot out the window as I was on the slow drive.

On the east side of the pass there was clear blue sky, at least for a while. The ridge is keeping the smoke on the other side. At least for today. This area is a six hour drive from my house. Even at that distance we check the air quality every day, especially before planning any out door activity.

The photos above were taken in the Siskiyous, east of the tunnel on Hwy 199. The Bog Preserve is OK for those of you that read one of my very first posts. 

Most of the highway is one lane.  You can see from the photos that the roadway is badly damaged. Logs, often still smoldering slide down every day. With the loss of trees are the loss of their roots that hold the dirt in place.  

A common sight are the Event Staging Areas. Here is where the crews come in for assignment. Or feeding stations. They may be where heavy equipment is brought in or serviced. Every fair ground, road yard, PG&E service area, some school yards. Rows of tents. Firefighters, male and female. Prison crews of nonviolent cons that are allowed work release.  Until recently they could not get jobs in the fire service after their release, but a recent change in the law allows them to use the job skills they get on the fire line. 

Without trees there are no roots to hold the thin layers of dirt in place, so it all comes down onto the road.

After the fire crews a whole new list of crews. The road crews, PG&E crews, crews to service the crews. When you have to drive slow to pass them, shout out "THANK YOU" 

Funds for these crews have been slashed by politicians of both sides, corporate bean counters wanting to post bigger profits at the cost of maintaining safety crews, local crews stretched to the max to even do regular infrastructure work now needing to do repairs.

Note the sky.  This is a good day.  Most of these pictures show the constant bad air. This is not just one or two days. The smoke starts usually in August, and will continue until November. This means kids can't play outside.  And that wine you love, it is being harvested by people doing hard physical work in bad air.

Here is where the fire traveled along the road.  It was stopped before going up the hill 

This patch shows the dilemma. The fire was put out, but this dead vegetation is where the next fire will take hold. Or if we get good rain, this will be the mulch to start the new growth.

If you don't live in a dry climate, you don't understand that this stuff doesn't rot in the rainy season. It just sits there, dry. All of the dead branches, leaves, the upright dead trees just sit there waiting for the next fire or even worse it is breeding ground for the beetle population that spread to the living trees. 

The rainy season will start soon. This is good and bad.  The good is that the fires will be put out for this year.  The bad is that there is nothing to hold the water in the soil. Rock slides, mud slides, downstream flooding. Now think about what is going to happen when the mud slides get taken by the full rivers to the bays and narrows. In addition the fish spawning grounds that we have been working so hard to rehabilitate will be badly silted. 

The people that live here are tough. They are accustomed to doing for themselves. Many of them just can't handle living in an urban setting. Among them you will find artisans, disabled, retired, and such.

These mountain people are accustomed to doing for themselves. If something is broke, they fix it. Or borrow one from a friend. Or do without.  The idea of "new" is not part of their thinking. They are the kind of people that have a used truck, held together with baling wire, or a refrigerator held closed with a gate latch. Their thinking goes back to the Depression and making do. Their clothes are shabby, but their boots are good. I heard more than one conversation about how it costs over $150 to resole a good pair of boots. 

This area, the Siskiyous have had four years of fire. That means that every summer they have had to scramble to find another place to be. Almost everyone has lost homes, or businesses, or farms. 

The hardest part of living in the fire zone is not the fire, or the loss, or the evacuations.

It is dealing with government, or when will PG&E reconnect service, or what new hurdles have been erected by the planning department.

A majority of folk live in secondhand RVs and trailers.  The county will not allow them to bring in "tiny houses" or container houses. These would give them a healthier, and warmer living situations.  The thought is that the county doesn't like them because they can't be taxed.

People here check the internet, and more importantly their friends before even a trip into town.

Which roads are open? Which roads are under reconstruction?