California has entered the summer fire season early. Normally the fires aren’t as intense until September nearing the end of summer. June began with a bang. In fact, over the weekend northern California was hit with several dry lightning storms causing fires to break out everywhere. It’s a shame rain wasn’t included with the lightning, it would have been helpful for the fire teams.
Our skies have been smoked filled all week. The fire fighters are making progress on the big fires but resources for fighting the fires are low with so many fires that there just aren’t enough crews to knock them down.
This morning the sun rose as usual but in a different way with the smoke filled skies.
The constant smoke is making clean air impossible and it’s difficult especially for those with health problems such as asthma. Your eyes are also constantly irritated by the smoke.
The big fires are quite a distance from us but the smoke is all over the area and too often there are the smaller local grass fires.
The other day we heard one of the CDF fire bombers outside and when we looked there was a large military cargo plane that had been converted to a fire fighting airplane flying low over the area. Soon we could see a plume of smoke and it appeared to be not far from us. The plane made several low flying passes over the house.
From our house we can see the main road across the way and I soon noticed a fire engine parked directly across from our house on the main road. It was there to stop traffic from going further down the road. The fire truck wasn’t there too long, the plane had dropped retardant several times on the fire and the ground crews were able to extinguish the fire. The fire was only about two miles from our place.
Most in this area keep the properties well irrigated and green but where the fire occured it’s mostly dry grasses with many dry trees.
We’ve avoided another dangerous fire and from what I understand, no houses were lost. The fire was started by someone trying to mow the dry grass to create defensible space around their house. The mower sparked the grass and the fire began.
We’re safe for yet another day.
