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Wildfires |
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2002 Colorado: Wildfires
As the time for our 2002 Colorado family get-together drew closer I was surprised to see images like these. Our plans came into jeopardy. Multiple fires, smoke drifting for hundreds of miles, evacuations, fire-fighters killed on the ground, fire-fighting aircraft crashing with fatalities. These aren't the things I wanted to hear as I planned the finer points of our next trip. (Bizarre is that two of the three biggest fires were started deliberately by forest service personnel. The Rodeo fire was [allegedly] started by Leonard Gregg, a contract firefighter who wanted some seasonal work. The Hayman fire was [allegedly] started by Terry Lynn Barton, a U.S. Forest Service employee. The Chediski fire apparently began as a signal fire lit by a lost hiker.)
It's not that the multiple fires in Colorado are theatening Colorado Springs (our destination), but the smoke from the Rodeo-Chediski fire in Arizona is making things unhealthy for adults, not to mention the elderly (our 90-year-old grandmother) and children (Felicia and Adam's 7-month-old, our 10-month-old Lila and 3-and-a-half-year-old Isaac).
A friend of mine who happens to live there answered my email thusly: You have good reason to be concerned. It varies from day to day, but generally it's bad. My wife K---- has been suffering considerably; she has trouble sleeping at night and displays symptoms that look like allergies all day long. I'm a fairly insensitive brute and so am not as bothered, although there have been days when even I could smell the smoke. The air is constantly hazy. I understand that a great deal of our smoke is coming from Arizona, so even if the Colorado fires are brought under control (whatever that means), we'll still be getting smoke from Arizona. I don't mean to sound too discouraging, and at the same time, I don't want you to run into health problems, especially for your more vulnerable folks.
We start making contingency plans: perhaps Steamboat Springs? A direct flight to SBS or HDN is incredibly expensive, but perhaps that's only because we're travelling close to the Independence Day holiday. Is it unsafe to spend time in DEN while waiting for the plane? Or can we survive getting into our rental car and high-tailing it out of there with the air conditioning turned on?
The air now seems pretty good. We've had some rain and wind, and the haze is gone. K----'s much better as well. Things have much improved. In theory, we'll be getting more rain over the next several weeks, which will also help. Of course, conditions could deteriorate at most any time, but it's been nice for a day or two now.
Well, that's better. Let's see what happens en route.
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We don't have a television in the house, and without a commute I just don't listen to the National Public Radio crown jewel All Things Considered, so I'm not really up on current events. I read a newsweekly, and the local newspaper a couple times a week, but that's not really being informed by any stretch of the imagination. I knew there were fires somewhere between the coasts, but that's about as much attention as I gave the matter. 
