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A resident's
letter to friends and family:
Date: Friday, August 11, 2017, 2:07 PM
This fire is not going away overnight! Here is a video of
just a small part of our fire:
Lolo National Forest Facebook video
Besides the crews working the direct fire, we have firetrucks from
all over the nation swarming our community during the day. I see
the names of their towns/counties/ states on their different
trucks. It's reassuring, but only 10 people patrol the whole
community all night. And huge ashes fall. For three nights in a
row we could watch the trees torching on the mountain... and night
before last there was a pink cloud rising from one of the valleys
that looked like Mordor from Lord of the Rings (a fire and
brimstone place of the underworld). Sleep can be sporadic.
Wake up- look outside, check the hot spot map on my phone,
listen... but pray never to hear the dreaded siren wail incase the
order comes to evacuate. Ah! To return to a quiet little
clean air mountain lake town that no one has heard of! We
are under an evacuation warning which means stay packed and listen
for the siren ORDER to evacuate. A man at the 4th fire
meeting at the high school last night asked, "If we leave home to
go to the ice-cream shop and the
evac order comes, will we be allowed to go back home to get the
pets?"...the answer is NO. Stay home or take the pets
everywhere. Andy and I only go to fire meetings together.
Otherwise one of us stays here to take the cats. Air quality
is dangerous. At least our home is very airtight and it gets
cool enough at night to keep the house shut up during the hot day.
I have an essential oil diffuser that I can use in the bedroom.
But the cats are not allowed in if I use it. Bad for their
livers! :~0
I am one of few who wear an N95 ventilator mask outside. Andy's
great idea. Home Depot in Missoula has them. Or order from Amazon
like we did the fire resistant tarps for the woodpiles. 95%
of the huge woodpiles in the area are uncovered. I will put a drop
of a breathe essential oil in my mask. Children are advised not to
play outside. People have been advised to leave for
health reasons but gosh!...the whole country has bad air from all
the fires in the US and Canada! Where do you go? |
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Our town is making national news:
The NY Times - Opinion- In Montana, Days of Smoke and Ash by Todd
Tanner
I regret to say that when they say "desiccated forests" in that
article, that there should be a disclaimer. Many good legal
bills that would have helped prevent a fire of this magnitude,
have been shot down because the "environmental greenies" get
enough votes to prevent the select clearing of our national
forests. We should be cutting down beetle kill trees and
weeding out undergrowth and overgrowth. I love the woods
natural but the national forests are not the wilderness areas
where the fires are allowed to rage because it is a natural
occurrence for the wilderness, and wilderness areas are
inaccessible usually to firefighters who are even at this time
maxed out with fires all over the country trying to save lives,
structures and national forests. Our fire here would not be
as bad if the legal bills were not shot down to do thinning and
cleaning of old undergrowth and beetle kill trees on the Rice
Ridge. The deluded "environmentalists" think they are saving
the habitat of the wild Canadian lynx, but now look! The
lynx has far less woods to roam because their habitat has burned
up; all that wood is wasted that could have been selectively
logged and harvested for firewood by locals. Now, the wood
is burning and causing us to inhale dangerous smoke and fumes.
Because of these bleeding heart liberals, this fire is bleeding
our state of money that we need elsewhere, people's homes and
lives are in danger... and firefighters have died and been
injured. This must change.Perhaps we can get enough
people to understand this needed action to vote properly to save
lots of areas from being burned, spending our states monies on
fighting wildfires and endangering our air quality, homes and
lives. Sometimes leaving the forests alone to protect one tree
from being cut down is not the best answer but proper management
would save us all grief in the long run. I like to volunteer
in different ways...this campaign will now be one of them. You
animal lovers can help protect the animals habitat by doing this
too. I guess unless it does not affect you directly you may not
understand the great need. It's hard to contain a big fire
if large embers due to winds and updrafts, jump the ground line
work.
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