Help! I’m trapped in a hot house with two kids and a poodle. We can’t open any of the windows because it smells like smoke outside. My eyes burn, my lungs ache, and I get winded climbing up stairs. Is this Snohomish County or Mexico City? Looking outside my window at the hazy sun, it’s hard to tell.
According to the thermostat, it’s 85 degrees inside my house. I unplug the box fan because all it does is make noise. I’d turn on the air conditioner, but we don’t have one. Instead, I drink glasses of water and try not to move.
I know there will be days this winter when I wish for a hot day like today, but right now, all I can do is pray for rain. One big downpour would clean the air, wouldn’t it? Or maybe we’re beyond the ability of rain to save us; I don’t know. I feel like we’re in a Ray Bradbury novel come to life.
There are bigger things to think about than me and my discomfort. Firefighters risk their lives to contain fires across the West. Ash from fires in British Columbia travels all the way to glaciers on the Columbia Icefields in Alberta. My childhood Girl Scout camp in Southern California has been evacuated.
But those of us stuck inside have reason to mourn our lost days of summer. In Snohomish County, it’s cloudy more than eight months a year. August is supposed to be clear weather, not a smoke storm. We’ve been robbed!
OK, I’m a little grumbly. I get that. I should probably turn it down a notch and focus on the positive. I’m safe, my family’s safe, my home isn’t in danger. I know what it’s like to evacuate due to fire, and people in my family have lost property as the result of wildfires. Being cooped up inside because of poor air quality is nothing compared to that.
Except that it isn’t just the crappy air quality that makes me upset; it’s that this appears to be our new normal. Every summer the wildfires get out of control. Every year firefighters travel from one state to another — and sometimes from as far away as Australia — trying to contain out-of-control infernos. How does this keep happening? Why do we let it?
Some fires are good. In Jasper National Park for example, pine trees need fire to explode pinecones, spread seeds and kill mountain pine beetles. We shouldn’t go back to the 1950s when we tried to prevent all forest fires.
But, in recent years, as many as 84 percent of all wildfires are caused by humans. Arson, discarded cigarettes, unattended campfires, burnt trash and towing chains sparking against the asphalt — come on, careless human beings, do better. Do you want to be trapped inside next summer, too?
Paging Smokey the Bear! I’m tired of paying the price for other people’s stupidity.
Jennifer Bardsley publishes books under her own name and the pseudonym Louise Cypress. Find her online on Instagram @the_ya_gal, on Twitter @jennbardsley or on Facebook as The YA Gal.
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