Marked Safe (so far) From the Tunnel Fire
UPDATE: Last night, the Level 1 order was rescinded for our area. Folks on Underwood are still Level 3. Fire fighters are working to contain the 500 plus acre fire, now just 5% contained. Winds are quiet today, temps in the 90s so it’s hot work for the fire teams, plus lots of poison oak. I won’t unpack until the weekend, winds are supposed to crank up Thursday. We’ve had lots of offers of places to go so not worried about that part. Just want to get through July 4 without any new fires.
Fire Districts are important. I knew that, even while writing my snarky post the other day. We have had first hand experience with how critical they are, since moving to the PNW from Fort Bend almost exactly 16 years ago. Watching fireworks with our friends on Aubrey Butte in Bend that July 4 so many years ago, the last night on the road before we arrived in White Salmon, WA, we witnessed a few side fires that started from the annual fireworks display. They were quickly extinguished by local firefighters. The second summer we were here, a fire roared up the bluff from river level to devour several homes on Underwood, just across the White Salmon River from us. We were a little bit clueless then, to the dangerous possibilities should the wind shift, or strengthen. We nervously joked that we were living in a MASH episode, with helicopters constantly dipping into the river, then out to the fire and back. Right in front of our deck view.
Now, 15 years later, another fire has started very close to that first fire. This time it roared up the bluff, has taken 10 homes, caused evacuation of 1000 people, left wineries and vineyards to the powers that be. Whole livelihoods are at gone or at stake. I was with a bandmate in Bingen, practicing some marimba songs for the upcoming First Friday event in Hood River. We saw the plume of smoke go up. We saw the first aircraft arrive to start dumping water on the burgeoning fire. On my way home up the hill, the smoke intensified, by the time I got to my house on the bluff opposite Underwood, across the White Salmon River, the smoke was thick. The aircraft responding were impressive. Planes, helicopters, tankers…we had it all yesterday as the residents of Underwood found safety elsewhere.
We were assigned Level 1: Get Ready. So we packed. Clothes, toiletries, meds. Dog food. Important papers. Savings bonds. Passports. Computers. The 20 completed squares for my granddaughter’s afghan. Our best wines, waiting by the door to be thrown into the car. Hooked up the tent camper. Then at 8 pm, started making dinner and opening a good bottle of wine. Just because we were still at home. Our friend who is with Fire District 3 had been on the scene all day. He didn’t go home until midnight. He’s in his 70s. So much appreciation. We are all hoping that the wind gods decide to continue to lay low. Forecast is for 30-40 mph winds for Thursday-Saturday. This is why the windsurfers and kiters of the world gather here. In case you didn’t know.
Fireworks have been canceled in Bingen, Hood River, and Cascade Locks. They should be. Hood River is rescheduling their fireworks show for New Years Eve. Brilliant! Snow doesn’t burn. This is our new reality. Hotter and drier summers are not a good fit for fireworks, obviously.
We are hoping to escape bad stuff, like we did 15 years ago. Like we did when the volunteer FD came in to the newly opened (15 years ago) brew pub, Everybody’s, in town as a fire raged in the building next door to get us out before a propane tank blew. Like we did when I was in Charlotte at the National Convention in 2012, when another wildfire started a stone’s throw from our neighborhood and my husband was sending me photos of flames he could see from down the street. There are more stories, these are just a few. I won’t even go there with the Eagle Creek Fire, started by a teenager with fireworks, in the heart of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. All that said, I’ll take this over hurricanes, tornados, failed power grids, Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ken Paxton, hot and humid, you get the picture. I do miss my friends, though.
Bottom line, fires and their smoke are coming for all of us. People who think it’s funny to write in fictional or insane or totally incompetent names during an election belong in ‘The Basket’. Totally Deplorable.
Fenway Fran, I hope that you can eventually put everything away and not have to evacuate. Your posting is just what I needed after a day in which I lost two good friends who just didn’t wake up this morning. I will miss them terribly but am so fortunate to have had them in my life since 1981. But I am not facing fires, evacuation, the loss of much more than two good friends. Yes, I am in TX, complete with all the things you don’t miss and I don’t want either. I sincerely mean that my thoughts and prayers are with you and the other people in the path of the fire or who have lost everything. May you be safe.
1Fran, I remember thinking something similar after Harvey came through our area. The choppers overhead on evacuation runs to Port Arthur sounded like what can only imagine it sounded like in Saigon. We just had the flooding mess to clean up, and not the worry of an oncoming army.
2Or the Flames.
Here’s to hoping you and yours stay safe.
Fran, thanks so much for the first-hand report. There have been times recently when I started to believe that George Washington knew what he was doing putting the new Capitol on the banks of the Potomac–never mind that his plantation was just down the river and Washington state wasn’t even on his radar, much less California or Texas. We have been spared a lot of what the rest of the country is going through recently–droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding, monstrous heat waves, etc., etc. I just wonder when our luck will run out.
3Indeed, wildfire is nerve wracking stuff and can wipe everything out in its path so quickly. I hope this passes safely for you. We are lucky in Juneau that it rains so much (Never thought I’d hear myself say that), but even here not long ago we had a fire warning dry summer that had everyone extremely worried. There are very few, if any, of us who don’t live surrounded by
4thick forest. It’s never happened before in Southeastern Alaska, and we wonder what is coming next. Please be sure to keep us updated on how you’re doing.
BarbinDC @ 2
I live 25 miles from DC, and we have not been spared drought. Although it rained this past week, there was no rain at all for a month around May-June. Crops look terrible, and there might not e enough hay to get the local cows through the winter.
Not as bad or dramatic as in some other places but some people look to lose their livelihoods.
5Wishing you calm winds and maybe some rain. Do you think people are *finally* accepting the fact of climate change? Every day it seems there’s a new “freak” weather event somewhere. Can’t be a freak occurrence if it happens every day.
6Keep safe, Fran.
We’re lucky here in the mountains, surrounded by National Forest, but (so far this summer) with plenty of rain. Cousins raising corn in the MidWest are grateful to have had 2″ of rain for the first time in 6 weeks….
7It’s been hot here too which worries me now that we’re in hurricane season!
8Best of luck Fran. We watched the news here in Beaverton from the first reports. What happened near you and elsewhere in Oregon the past couple of years foretells our future. What’s been happening in Canada could happen in so many places, and it’s really early in the fire “season” which is becoming longer and longer. Ya, there’s no global warming and Covid was a hoax.
9Thanks for the update. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you. I always thought the Northwest was too wet to burn. Of course, I thought that about Canada, too. We will all be breathing smoke for the foreseeable future.
10“I always thought the Northwest was too wet to burn. Of course, I thought that about Canada, too.”
You’d be amazed at how dry the forests in the west are in summer. Most of them have a wet/dry season, and the dry is super dry. The ground is often covered with layers of incredibly dry pine needles. It takes very little to start that (or a grassy field) burning.
We were in Oregon at the start of covid, and the fires that year were nearby and bad. Then the next year the midwest learned they weren’t immune from smoke from the west, and this year the east coast is learning they can’t keep smoke away even though it may be coming from hundreds of miles away.
It’s something that can, and eventually will, affect almost all of us, even if we’re not in what we think is a problem area. In this way it’s like big traffic problems or problems with water supply – a lot of us can think these are only problems for others but that just isn’t so.
11A story on LinkedIn today reported that yesterday, the 4th of July, was the hottest day ever recorded on earth, and summer has barely started. Ya, climate change is just a lib conspiracy theory.
12The report that July 4th was he hottest recorded day ever on earth will be debunked by anti climate changers as a deep state creation. This certainly means that they have no use for a weather prediction. After all, the weather predictions come from the godless government. Just one thing. Do they not sweat like everyone else?
13“Ever” meaning “since 1979.”
14Harry, what’s up with 1979, vs. 125,000 years?
15