After the Inferno

Waking up this morning to almost-normal air quality, skies dim with clouds instead of smoke. Oh God, what a relief to hear rain in the middle of the night, night before last. The next day, everyone I talked to said "I've never been so glad to see rain."

This from Oregonians, whose usually think "high fire danger" means "fire somewhat more likely than death from hypothermia."


The wind started September 7th, Labor Day. Todd and I were cleaning up the kitchen. I vividly remember the kitchen window rattle-banging; I looked up and said "Here it comes," and we went on with what we were doing.

Later that evening the power went out for several hours. It was almost dark, so I went to bed. The next morning, there were continuing outages all over the metro area-- and worse, fires had spilled down the west flank of the Cascades everywhere.

It was windy all day Tuesday. By afternoon, I could still see blue sky to the north of our house, but the southern sky was roiling with smoke pouring up out of Clackamas County. We weren't yet the scene of the apocalyptic photos you may have seen: that was coming in the next few days, and we would soon wear the badge of "worst air quality in the world" for a day or two.

I sent "Are you safe?" emails to friends in the Santiam area, and friends in the Rogue Valley. (All safe, though some have lost homes and belongings.) All of Clackamas County was put on at least Level 1 evacuation: at one point, about two-thirds of the county was under "Go Now." Fire zones and attendant evacuation zones bloomed across the map of western Oregon like some awful kind of bright red blight.

Meanwhile we carried on with work and life... somehow. Intense, dirty smoke was with us for more than a week. People coughed and sneezed. Asthma and migraine attacks spiked, some from anxiety but mostly from the dirty air. Health professionals reported a surge in CPD emergencies of all kinds. People confessed to feeling unlocatable fear. Apparently we have an instinctive fear of the smell of smoke: who'd have thought?

Last weekend the weather forecasts began to call for rain in the Thursday/Friday timeframe. The forecasts were more than usually changeable, though. Fires on this scale make their own air masses, their own air movement, and can drive weather on a regional scale. It was clear there would be rain and thunder; not clear how much, where it would fall heavily, when it would arrive.

Early Friday morning I woke up to thunder. I lay awake and waited, and waited, and finally heard the first drops fall.

There was more drizzle Friday. Mid-morning, I took a break from work, made a cup of tea, and went out and sat on my front porch to watch the rain fall. The street and sidewalks were still full of leaves and twigs brought down by the wind, and the rain was soaking them down. Today I'm going to go rake and sweep, not because it really needs to be done, but because I need to get out of the house. I haven't been outside since the smoke got bad.

This will only get worse. God have mercy on us.

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