Better Communications

Day 318: Larry, the DNR mouthpiece mentioned in yesterday's post, was replaced today by Doug (DNR) and Mark (USFS), a wisecracking pair who were more informative than their predecessor, if not addressing me in quite the same "kindred spirit" as Christian had done. After a greeting from Mark of, "Hi, ma'am! Are you local?" to which I responded immediately with a laughing, "I sure wish you guys would turn that map 'north up,'" we got along famously. Mark responded to my complaint with a chuckle, "Yeah, I noticed that, too. I don't know why they did that," and went directly to the map, removing it from its staples and turning it up into the proper orientation. "Thank you!" I said. "I was getting sick to my stomach looking at it upside-down." "Me too," he agreed. I knew I was going to like this pair based entirely on that initial contact.

The men confirmed what I already knew: the fire grew by over fifty acres overnight, now at 225 and spreading steadily to the southeast and up the northeast flank of Stahl Mtn. The residents of Pleasant Valley have been put on Level 1 evacuation alert, a "get ready" status in case the smoke reaches hazardous concentrations or the fire spreads more quickly than anticipated. Level 2 would mean voluntary evacuation to a shelter or to be ready to evacuate at a moment's notice. Level 3 means mandatory evacuation. The town of Morton is currently prepared to shelter evacuees under either Level 2 or Level 3 alerts. There is less of an inversion today, so the breathability of the air here at home is substantially improved from last night when I was hacking and coughing every few minutes. As I have told friends, I will evacuate either when forced to by a Level 3 alert, or when breathing becomes too difficult.

In other news, we have heavy rain in our forecast starting Friday. This could be good for the fire, but bad with respect to the potential for creating debris flows like the one we had on Tahoma Creek just two weeks ago or flooding on major rivers. Fire, earthquake, debris flow, the possibility of flood...what's next? Foes or famine? Or maybe a plague of locusts? Seems we're running the whole gamut.