Tuesday, September 1, 2009

fire water burn

I have borrowed this post from my younger daughter, who is just about at the three-year anniversary of moving to LA. The fires burning now are the worst she has seen since she has lived there. We check with her every day to see how it is affecting her-she has had to get an inhaler to breathe normally now because the smoke and particulates in the air are so heavy.
Anyway, here is her take on it and a link to some time lapse photography of the smoke.

i still have not adjusted to fires. i know they are a fact of life in southern california, but to me, it is a complete oddity to be driving around with smoke filling the air around you.

tonight's drive home from work was the best/worst of it yet. more of the hills are on fire and it is more visible from where i am. the smoke is filling all of the hills north of me, and almost every ridge is filled with spots of flames. what's unfathomable to me is that they keep saying, "this would be so much worse if the santa anas were blowing. if they were, this would be the true disaster that we've been predicting."

and because it's so odd to me, i don't see how the city keeps on functioning. in my mind, we should all be standing outside just watching. or if i had my way, i'd be up on one of the high floors in one of my mid-wilshire buildings watching.

i can't imagine that just 20 miles north of me, people are losing every thing they own. that the landscape is being scorched. that firefighters are waging what has become an unending battle against the flames. every day we wake up and find out it has only gotten worse in the night. i'm trying to find some good side, and I’m not able to.

Check here for the time-lapse photography. It's pretty frightening.
And here for this morning's pictures from my daughter's blog.

2 comments:

Ann in NJ said...

In 1988 I spent the summer at my parent's house in southeast Idaho, about 3 hours west of Yellowstone National Park. That year, they had tremendous fires that burned a large portion of the park. Even as far away as we were, there was the smell of smoke in the air constantly - and it was very stressful. I think the human body is hard wired to react to that smell with a "flight" response, and even if you are in a safe place, it still triggers a stress reaction.
I hope your daughter stays safe.

Sigrun said...

That's scary. I have allergies--I can't imagine how allergy and asthma sufferers can stand it. Hope all gets resolved soon.