On the Road: Pole Creek Fire Update 9-29-2012

Pole Creek Update

Thank you for nice comments on our “reporting”. I did feel rather like Lois Lane as we contemplated hopping the fence and dashing across the field to get closer … “C’mon, Jimmy, we gotta get the story!”

The worst days of the fire are over. It’s at 25,553 acres, 1100 firefighters, 50% containment. But what followed the big flames were the worst days for Sisters. An inversion settled the smoke in a seemingly solid mass directly on the town.

Here it comes . . .

Here it is.

They recalibrated the pollution monitoring equipment to allow measurements in an environment where you can actually see the air you are going to breath swirling around you. Ordinarily the equipment would measure particulates of 250 parts per cubic meter as a reading of “hazardous”. The air in Sisters read 1183 parts – sort of quad+ hazardous?

The towns people, however, were astonishingly blasé about it. “Sisters is Open for Business” read the headlines in the paper. Just above the story on the pollution levels was a photo of schoolchildren waiting outside for the bus. Really? People were out and about wiping their stinging eyes on their way to the store. (How did we know this? Well, we were out wiping our eyes on our way to the store – we never claimed to be especially smart.)

Actually, I found the people of Sisters and Bend to be blasé in general. They seemed to accept the fact that there were 1150 firefighters there risking their health, safety and sometimes lives to protect them as their due with no great need for gratitude. Ten years ago during the Black Butte fire when there were 100 firefighters sleeping in the park, I tried to organize a cookie bake as a way to express our appreciation. I called every church in Sisters with no luck at all. They seemed to think it a bit odd – “Oh, no, we don’t really do that kind of thing.”

Unfortunately, there has been little improvement. I was dismayed at church on Sunday, after the first week that the fire had been really raging, when the service ended without a single mention of the fire, let alone a prayer for the safety of the 1100+ firefighters. The topic of the sermon that morning? How to behave as a Christian. The pastor’s face dropped with chagrin when I told him I thought something was missing that morning.

It’s always a teeny bit possible that I am wrong. I hope so. Anyway, we can’t breathe here, so we are off.