This really sucks -- large portions of my
state are on fire, and one of the fires is frighteningly close to our airpark
property. They've evacuated the whole town there. For once I'm glad we hadn't
built anything there yet. I'm a bit worried about our neighbors though -- lots of
the people who live at the airpark full-time are fairly old. At least all of
those have the money to get out of there easily, but there are plenty of others in
the area who don't. And there are no expectations of being able to confine it any
time soon, and no predictions of rain. There hasn't been any all year, and the
whole state is short of water, so I don't imagine we can easily afford the water
to fight those fires.
Another annoying factor was listening to one of
our stupider Senators on the news last night blaming "rabid environmentalists" for
using up state funds in lawsuits that could be used to fight the fires. I have a
very strong suspicion that those "rabid" types are just trying to get the state
and BLM to do controlled burns to clear out underbrush and tinder, so that when
wildfires do start they don't explode the way these have. Good thing I already did
my Ampersand piece;
I'm having trouble thinking of fire as "friendly" these days.