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Alaska ... where Nature bites back
Jun. 30th, 2004 04:47 pmIt's not especially comforting that there's a cataclysmic forest fire 30 miles up the road from the house we're buying.
When we were up in Fairbanks on Monday to attend the engineer's inspection, the smoke was so thick that you could barely see across the road. It was like driving in heavy fog, only it reeked. Forest fires smell, to me, like burning trash. Your eyes burned and stung just from being out in it.
I can't imagine that a fire could possibly be allowed to travel 30 miles down the road ... especially with Fairbanks, Alaska's second largest city, in its path. They'd bulldoze the forest before letting Fairbanks burn. But it's still a nervous reminder of how quickly conifer forests can go up in flames ... and how much of Alaska is highly flammable when it's this dry. We had to prepare to evacuate once when I was a kid, though it didn't come to that -- the closest a fire ever got to my childhood home was about 15 miles, which is still a decent safety buffer.
But I still don't like to think about that fire so close. And all the people who may be losing their homes in it. Orion and I were just up in Chatanika about a week ago, picnicking by the water. It was so pretty and now it'll all be black.
When we were up in Fairbanks on Monday to attend the engineer's inspection, the smoke was so thick that you could barely see across the road. It was like driving in heavy fog, only it reeked. Forest fires smell, to me, like burning trash. Your eyes burned and stung just from being out in it.
I can't imagine that a fire could possibly be allowed to travel 30 miles down the road ... especially with Fairbanks, Alaska's second largest city, in its path. They'd bulldoze the forest before letting Fairbanks burn. But it's still a nervous reminder of how quickly conifer forests can go up in flames ... and how much of Alaska is highly flammable when it's this dry. We had to prepare to evacuate once when I was a kid, though it didn't come to that -- the closest a fire ever got to my childhood home was about 15 miles, which is still a decent safety buffer.
But I still don't like to think about that fire so close. And all the people who may be losing their homes in it. Orion and I were just up in Chatanika about a week ago, picnicking by the water. It was so pretty and now it'll all be black.