Monday brought an extreme weather event that in January would be called either a Polar Vortex or an Alberta Clipper. On this day it was hell on earth. Winds came out from the east. The event not only downed trees, power lines that in turn created new fires or reignited old ones that many fire departments in the area assumed were out.
We all learned that it wasn’t just California Wildfires that has gripped the West this year, and with corona virus restrictions in placed, it has created a nightmare scenario.
Then there are the rumors and the fake news. It seems that the fires in Oregon were arson caused by the antifascists groups that are demonstrating in Portland. State officials said no, it was the easterly winds that caused most of the fires.
I didn’t realized the severity of what was happening until I saw the plastic on my bay window had shredded off and the umbrella over our deck table had blown off, landing on the front lawn, one of its ribs snapped off. A tree two houses down blew over, but fortunately nothing more serious. I still had power and wasn’t threatened by fast approaching fire.
I watched the news with a sense of morbid fascination. Are our forests so badly mismanaged that super infernos like these are the new normal? It appears to be that way. And regardless of whoever is our nation’s President, it is a topic that needs serious looking into.
The most important issue besides COVID-19 is climate change, and what industrialized countries need to do to make it less costly on all of us. Granted, our planet goes through changing cycles such as climate change, but man has accelerated that by burning ungodly amounts of fossil fuels that creates greenhouse gases and causes our entire ecosystem to dramatically change, increasing wildland fires, hurricanes, floods and melting polar icecaps.
It was a fun holiday to celebrate our nation’s labor force and all workers including our first responders. It’s too bad they didn’t get to enjoy it.
Jerry Schellhammer 