The Craftiest Workshop

It really only takes one bad day and the wildfires start up. Last year it was May 5 and this year it was yesterday, May 10.

I guess you could say we had our first scare a three weeks ago when a fire started near an oil flaring site about 1 km west of our place. They were able to catch that fire and had it out in a couple days.

On Thursday of this week, Alberta wildfire had put out the warning that our area was in a red flag situation. This means the percentage of relative humidity is lower than the temperature and a cross over has occurred. Peak burning situation for wildfire.
Yesterday, we had almost gone the whole day without too much concern. I noticed a new fire on the Alberta Wildfire map just after we had supper and it looked to be east of us. I walked to our east facing windows and sure enough, we could see a huge smoke plume building up. This was at 6:20pm.

The fire started 25 km from our place so that cloud was quite big.
By 9:30 it was quite a bit larger.
They put out evacuation orders for properties close to the fire.

At 11pm you could start to see the fire within the cloud of smoke.

Between the time I went to sleep at midnight and 3am when I got up to check on it, the wind had died down to nothing and smoke from BC had descended on us. An 11 on the air quality scale today which really maxes out at 10.

Shortly after we noticed this fire, Fort McMurray had an evacuation alert. They wanted the entire city to be ready to evacuate. We still have our house there and two of our kids living in it. Today they expanded the alert to include the smaller communities south east of the city.

I am trying to figure out why this has become our norm. Wild fires in Northern Alberta in the spring. We spend much of May and June in a smoky haze.

Smoke filled sky is hard on mental health and there is no “fresh” air to breathe in outside. Gardening in a P100 mask is no fun but I think that is what I may end up having to do to plant my garden.

Chris goes from a teaching mode into a guidance role. The two communities he taught courses to in the last few weeks are two of the communities having to activate their emergency centers because of the fire close to us. At least the material should be fresh in their minds about how best to coordinate people and resources.

I marveled at the birds and a deer that I saw today. Going about their usual routine; the birds singing and the deer munching away on any green foliage poking up through the ground. Maybe they have extra filters in their lungs that humans do not. I coughed almost immediately when I poked my head outside.

Sometimes I need to use this blog to talk out stressful situations and wildfire season is stressful. Pray for rain everyone and that everyone stays safe.