July 4, 2004

• This valley is clearly divided….
  UPDATED
  
  
  Living for weeks under the smoke from wildfires farther north, many of
  us have been dreading the annual pyrotechnic insanity of Independence
  Day.  [update: 
  today, something different:  here (and in Wasilla, according to
  Greyfox) there have been big flat flakes of ash, particles bigger than
  the average snowflake, falling from the broken cloud cover.]  I oooh and aaaah with the rest over skyrockets exploding in
  a dark sky, but frankly can’t see the point of it this time of year
  when all you get is a lot of noise, stinky smoke, and some washed-out
  color in the never-dark sky of the midnight sun.  We do our
  fireworks on New Years, when the sky is black and the colors reflect
  off the snow spectacularly.

  We live in a forest infested with spruce bark beetles, full of standing
  dead trees, dry and filled with volatile resin, that make great tinder
  for starting fires.  This year the state has banned sale and use
  of fireworks.  Here’s how one resident expressed it to a reporter
  in today’s Anchorage Daily News:

  Houston resident Tammy Bailey, who has lived in the Valley for more
  than 20 years, sympathizes with the state authorities. She’s converting
  her two-acre back yard into a rock garden because she didn’t like the
  idea of the dead spruce trees, ravaged by bark beetles, being so close
  to her house. She also sees small amounts of rain in mud puddles around
  her house but notes that under her car the dust is still visible.
  “Have you ever seen a spruce tree explode?” she asked. “It’s like a
  bomb going off. All that spruce is just standing kindling.”

  In the Houston/Big Lake area, where Tammy Bailey lives, in 1996 the
  Miller’s Reach Fire burned nearly forty thousand acres and destroyed
  hundreds of homes.  One of my close friends lost her home
  then.  The scramble to evacuate and to rescue stranded pets, etc.,
  as the fire exploded seemingly in no time at all, was a frantic and
  only partially successful mess.  The origin of that fire was
  established:  bottle rockets.  Residents remember.

  Interestingly enough, there is a cluster of four fireworks stands along
  the highway between Houston and Big Lake.  I think that’s where
  they ended up because sales of fireworks are illegal in Anchorage and
  Wasilla, and that was as close as they could get to town, where most of
  their customers are.  People drive about sixty miles from
  Anchorage to buy fireworks there.  This year, the proprietors are
  frustrated by the emergency order stopping their sales.  Robert
  Hall, whose family owns three of the four stands, talked to reporters:

  Hall plans to torch his inventory, one item at a time, in what he
  promises to be the best fireworks show Houston has ever seen.
  Afterward, he plans to declare bankruptcy. He is working on getting a
  license for the show but promised an act of civil disobedience if it
  doesn’t come in time.
  “I don’t care if they throw me in jail,” he said. He stands to lose 90
  percent of his business over the ban. July 3 and 4 are his two biggest
  selling days of the year.

  Knowing the attitudes of many locals toward those eyesores that
  regularly dispense their noisy, smelly and dangerous wares along the
  highway, and how many of them own arsenals of firearms, and the way a
  lot of them like to celebrate holidays with alcohol and other drugs, I
  think he’s risking more than legal action.

  Anchorage Daily News | Fireworks banned in most of Alaska
  

  • 4:38 pm
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