Wildfires

Idaho is on fire, folks. According to the NIFC website (www.nifc.gov), there are currently 10 states reporting one or more wildfires. Idaho is in the lead with 16 fires currently burning (180,587 acres), with only 3 fires currently contained. Next behind Idaho is Washington, with 9 fires burning. Sometimes, fires occur naturally, ignited by heat from the sun or a lightning strike. However, the majority of wildfires are the result of human carelessness. You may wonder what this does to the air quality. Yesterday, the Air Quality Alert was set at "red", which prompted the Boise School District to have to cancel all outdoor athletic practices and games for school children. Plain and simple, all you can smell is burning wood. It does a number on people with any kind of respiratory trouble. Kids may be affected more, because their little airways are still developing. A couple of weeks ago, there was a huge wildfire in Ola (about 30 miles from here), and when we got up in the morning, the car, patio table, etc., were covered in ash.

After the Ola Fire was contained, we took a drive there to see the landscape. It was pretty sad to see how much land had been affected.

In the above picture, the darker area in the hills (most of the picture) is land that has burned. This was just a portion of what burned.

Here is a close-up shot of some of the burned trees

Last summer, there was a crazy man who led police on a high-speed chase through a couple of Idaho towns. Law enforcement layed down a spike mat, which popped the tires on the man's car, but he kept right on driving on the rims. As you can imagine, driving on your rims causes lots of sparks. As if he wasn't already in enough trouble, he proceeded to set off something like 14 fires, until he finally stopped his car.

The air still smells a little putrid today, but doesn't smell quite as bad as it did yesterday morning. The temperatures are suppose to go down a bit starting tomorrow, so hopefully that will help.