Week 36 of "Fire and Smoke" - Oregon City - Week 36 - September 7 to September 13, 2020

This was a pretty awful week.  It all started on Monday afternoon.  I was in the woods spraying a batch of herbicide on ivy when, suddenly, a very strong wind started blowing.  Leaves were blowing off trees, branches were swaying on the trees - it was weird.  I climbed out of the woods and into the hay field to see the eastern sky full of dust.  Well, I thought it was dust, but it was SMOKE.  Inside the house, I said to Dad, "what is happening".  He's says its a strange meteorological event and that high winds were predicted for several days.  Right - and big winds means branches fall on power lines, which fall on dry grass and fires start.  And, don't forget chains dragged by a trailer can start a fire too.  A big fire started in Molalla at a logging yard where piles and piles of stacked logs burned.

Another big fire started up the Clackamas and is called (gulp) the Riverside fire - that is the very place where we had camped just last week.  Maps show that the origin of the fire was across the river and down river from where we camped, but we are all expecting the worst - since fires do jump rivers and do go upstream.  There was also a big fire on the Santiam River ...near Detroit Lake - where we camped in June.  The little town of Detroit burned completely.  The map seems to show that the campground where we stayed was not burned

Beverly had several cottonwood trees and branches fall around her house.  We spent Tuesday and Wednesday at her place picking up all the debris and stacking it all in big "potential burn piles".  Jessica also had "millions" of doug fir branches and tips of branches fall in her yard.  I think we gathered up five trailer loads of branches and placed them in her burn pile.

This was our sky on Tuesday







At one point Ann posted this.


This is the sky on Wednesday



We went to the cemetery and photographed a grave - sky was really yellow



This is Thursday



Friday



Saturday



Sunday morning



Sunday afternoon - air quality is better!



Evacuations - we all had an app that connected us to the Clackamas County Emergency Network.  Areas were green (get ready) or yellow (be set...to evacuate) or red (go...evacuate now).  When Oregon City turned yellow, some family members wanted to leave.

Warren and Whitney were the first to go - they headed to Bend where they planned to stay with the Wadsworths, and surprisingly had little difficulty getting out of the Metro area.  It was mostly because they headed towards Estacada (no one wanted to go to Estacada because of the fire) and then turned north in order to get on Hwy 26.  However by the time they got to their destination, the air quality index had increased to a level higher than in Oregon City.  They stayed only one night and returned on Friday.

Jessica and Bev left for Bend on Thursday too.  Jessica found the situation in Bend to be no better than in Oregon City and came back on Saturday.  She did have fun going to food places in Bend.  Bev went on to Sunriver where she and another family had already made plans to rent a house and party for the weekend.  She came back on Monday.

Travis and Malcolm, surprisingly, did not evacuate.  Malcolm got all of his stuff together, prepared his little trailer for a trip but then never left.  Travis drove to Brunner Manor to pick up his trailer, but it took him two hours to get here.  The traffic was gridlocked, and it was almost impossible to drive anywhere.  By the time they got back home they knew it'd be hard to get out of town and they'd heard that air quality conditions were worsening in other areas.  So they stayed and worked on their remodel.

One thing Malcolm did was to set up a sprinkler on our roof - to keep flying embers from igniting the shingles.  I'm glad we didn't need to use it.

Dad and I stayed, figuring we'd protect the three forts on Brunner Rd.  We really didn't feel there was any danger from actual fires.  A funny thing happened the first night.  I'd been listening to a movie about space travel to Mars.  I'd folded up the laptop and put it on the floor by my bed.  Sometime in the night the audio from the movie came on, and I could hear pounding (which I took to be pounding on our front door) and loud voices calling out (which I interpreted as a loudspeaker broadcasting from somewhere on the road) - all of which were on the movie.  I woke with a start assuming fire trucks were on our road and the pound on the door was to alert us to evacuate.  Too make it worse...

Dad had already been awakened and thought I was being very inconsiderate and was watching the movie under the covers and not using my ear buds.  We had a good laugh about the whole thing.

It wasn't too bad.....except we didn't want to go outside.  There was so much smoke and most times, it smelled like someone was burning garbage.  Honestly, it was harder on me to be trapped inside the house because of the smoke that to be "quarantined" because of Covid 19.  At least with Covid, I can go outside the house (and breathe fresh air whenever I want).

To keep myself busy I completely rearranged the contents of one bookcase in the bedroom and threw a ton of stuff out.  And.......I cleaned up/reorganized/the fruit room.  Well ---it was a mess, but also we are starting to make grape juice and needed a place to put the new juice.



Here is our first batch of juice - as good as ever.



Dad does a good job of harvesting the grapes





Next week begins Home School for Jess and Bev's kids.  I have second grade science for Abby and Jude and 4th grade science for Logan and Clara.  Also Kindergarten Social Studies and Science for Ruby.  We've set up a "classroom" in our living room.  I must admit I'm a little nervous about beginning because I've never done this kind of teaching....my students and I...we'll just figure it out as we go along.



Here they are - - enjoying the last days of summer vacation  - -well, not Copeland.



Miscellaneous photo of Copeland