Marked as safe...
Sep. 8th, 2020 08:03 pm...at least for now. Western Oregon is dealing with a lot of wildfires right now, and there's a sizeable one heading toward Eugene/Springfield (though not the largest one in the state by far). You can take a look at it here. The bigger one is to the north, approaching the Salem area. Both started in the Cascade Mountains to the east and have been heading west quite quickly due to high winds.
I personally am not in danger at this point: I live on the west end of town, and to get here, the fire would have to jump a river and a freeway, not to mention go through the rest of town. Could happen, but not likely. I do have friends in harm's way, though. One of my coworkers who lived out in one of the tiny towns up in the mountains evacuated this morning and as far as we know, there's nothing left. A couple of others live closer to town and have packed but at this point are sitting tight.
Of course, where there's fire, there's smoke, and since we live in a valley, the entire area has been blanketed in smoke for over a day now. It looked like it was twilight all day today, with an orange haze over everything, and there was a coating of ash on every exposed surface. One of my coworkers (one of the ones that are packed but still not evacuated) said he couldn't see two houses down for the smoke. So, breathing wasn't all that fun either. At least we didn't need to go out of the house for anything.
Anyway, point is, don't worry for me. We're doing fine.
I personally am not in danger at this point: I live on the west end of town, and to get here, the fire would have to jump a river and a freeway, not to mention go through the rest of town. Could happen, but not likely. I do have friends in harm's way, though. One of my coworkers who lived out in one of the tiny towns up in the mountains evacuated this morning and as far as we know, there's nothing left. A couple of others live closer to town and have packed but at this point are sitting tight.
Of course, where there's fire, there's smoke, and since we live in a valley, the entire area has been blanketed in smoke for over a day now. It looked like it was twilight all day today, with an orange haze over everything, and there was a coating of ash on every exposed surface. One of my coworkers (one of the ones that are packed but still not evacuated) said he couldn't see two houses down for the smoke. So, breathing wasn't all that fun either. At least we didn't need to go out of the house for anything.
Anyway, point is, don't worry for me. We're doing fine.