May 4, 2004

• Wildfire in the
  
  Neighborhood

  
  I just now heard the helicopter take off from the RV park up the street
  and do a final flyover of the fire scene.  As I was walking back
  home from dropping my car at Lobo Tire for the changeover, I saw the
  firefighters from the one truck and the helicopter stowing their
  gear.  But I’m telling the end of the story first.  The first
  we knew that anything was amiss was the sound of the helicopter
  circling again and again.  At one point it came down and hovered
  at the end of the cul de sac as if it were landing, but then it went
  away.  As it flew over the house I looked up and saw that it was a
  fire chopper.

  
  The next time it went over it had its water bucket hanging, full. 
  It had been down to the Susitna River, a mile away, to fill the
  bucket.  They filled it at least a dozen times, brought the water
  back and dumped it as I watched.  I walked out to the end of the
  cul de sac, for a view of the fire.  By the time I got there, the
  copter had already dumped its bucket a couple of times and all I could
  see was smoke.  One of the neighbors who came out to the
  turnaround to get a look said that for a while, before the firefighters
  got there, they could see flames above the trees.  Another one
  explained that the chopper had set down at the RV park long enough to
  let out its load of smoke jumpers and they had rendezvoused with the
  truck and found a way to get to the fire scene on foot.  As we
  stood in the turnaround we could hear their voices carrying on the wind.

  
  There is still snow in shaded parts of the forest, and the low places
  are flooded with meltwater, but above ground level most of the
  vegetation is dead and dry.  Every mature spruce tree in the
  muskeg has been killed by bark beetles.    They’re
  standing dead and tinder-dry, ready to feed a fire.  The beetles
  are on the wing right now.  One of them landed on my arm as I was
  standing by my car waiting for Paul the tire guy to get back.  He
  was over at the RV park talking to fire fighters, stopped off there on
  his way back from the cul de sac on his go cart.  We stood there
  together for a while, he with his camcorder and I with my digital
  camera, recording the water drops.  My pics are still saving to
  the hard drive now, and I’ll try when they are done to match them up to
  the text here.  I noticed as they started to save that I’d left
  the camera set for tungsten light, so the color is off.

   There was a light breeze today but fortunately no strong winds,
  or that fire wouldn’t have gone out so quickly.  With each load
  from the hanging bucket I could see the smoke diminish.  Every
  person who came out that cul de sac to spend a few moments seeing what
  could be seen from there, said something similar to my thoughts: 
  “Too close to home.”  It’s the fourth nearby fire in the five
  years we’ve lived in this place.  In 1996, before we moved over
  here from our old place across the highway, there was a huge wildfire
  between here and Wasilla, 37,000 acres burned over and more than 300
  structures destroyed.  We lived in the smoke cloud for days,
  wondering if the fire was coming behind it.

  
  Short break here–Paul called to tell me the tire job was done and I
  walked over to get the car.  He told me the fire is apparently not
  out yet.  The crew in the truck has gone up to the Caswell siding
  on the Alaska Railroad to access the fire scene along the tracks. 
  The railroad right of way was the origin of the fire, and that’s all I
  know about how it started.

  The shot at left here is that muskeg full of frogs I’ve been blogging
  about.  They are still singing but it doesn’t sound like so many
  voices.  I understand the song is to attract mates.  Maybe
  most of them are already done with mating and are now occupied with
  their predatory activities, consuming insects.  That’s a pleasant
  thought for me.  Our poor dog whined at the door to get back in
  almost as soon as I let him out this morning.  I found a cloud of
  mosquitoes around him when I opened the door.

  Some of
  the leaf buds on the trees are beginning to open up.  That’s how
  far along spring has progressed here.  Down the valley in Wasilla,
  50 miles away, the trees are showing a thin hazy green veil of new
  leaves.  My driveway and the dirt roads around here are drying up
  but still not dusty yet.  That’s a nice stage for the roads. 
  I wish it could stay that way.

  Captain Caffeine (AKA the Old Fart, Greyfox) came home for a quick
  visit early this morning.  He made coffee, picked up the new
  “T-shirts” sign I had just made for him, bustled around here gathering
  merchandise and whatever while the printer was spitting out twelve
  copies of the new “guns for sale” flyers I made.  He grabbed his
  pension check to deposit on his way back through Willow, and the box of
  other stuff I’d been collecting to take to town for him, including
  earplugs.  They’re Mac’s plugs, gobs of sticky silicone that fit
  over not in the ear canal.  He’s hoping that adding them to the
  little foam plugs he puts in his ears to sleep will keep out enough of
  his neighbor’s loud music that he’ll be able to sleep.  One night
  recently, he said it was so loud that when a train went by he couldn’t
  hear the train.  Then he was gone, to get back down there and set
  up shop for the day.  Who was that caped superhero?

  

  • 10:13 pm
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