Fire & Smoke
When I first met my husband in 2000, he was studying at Oregon State University, and I was just about to start law school at the University of Georgia. When we decided to get married, one of us had to move, and I ended up studying as a visiting student at the University of Oregon my last year (though my degree was ultimately from UGA).
That move started a three year adventure of life on the west coast, where we travelled extensively in the Pacific Northwest and also became very close to Marty and Barbara McKeown. Marty hired me as a clerk when I was in law school, and I helped write briefs and arguments for his many workers compensation and social security clients.
After I graduated, Marty hired me as an associate, and I started my career helping people hurt on the job— mostly folks who worked in lumber mills and hospitals. My work with him involved arguing cases before administrative law judges and the Oregon Court of Appeals and getting to know my fellow attorneys.
The job also involved travel to meet with clients or attend hearings in Portland, Klamath Falls, Coos Bay, Grants Pass and Medford, Oregon.
When we first started hearing about fires out west, we weren’t surprised. Fires are a regular part of life there, and when we take road trips, we adjust when fires cause hazardous or smoky conditions.
For instance, we were going to visit friends in Salt Lake City several years ago, but due to fires, we diverted south. Just this summer, we intended to visit the North Rim of the Grand Canyon but were thwarted by fires.
But these fires are different. They are bigger. They are fiercer.
We now see places that feel like a second home to us blanketed by smoke. Our friends, Marty and Barbara McKeown, when we called them this weekend, had escaped to the coast, where air quality was better (though it was still foggy).
My sister, who lives just east of Portland, traveled with her family to the Oregon state border with Idaho on Sunday in an effort to glimpse blue sky. The air quality, due to fires, in Gresham and the Portland area was in excess of an index of 500 last weekend.
To give you some perspective, an air quality index above 301 is considered hazardous.
To give you yet more perspective, the air quality index in Atlanta today (I wrote this on Tuesday) is 30.
My sister and her children wore masks not just because of COVID-19 but because breathing the very air was dangerous.
We as a people believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and clean air is both life-sustaining and a source of happiness. Having lived in a place where it rained for almost six months straight, I can attest to the fact that grey skies can get you down, even if you have the sunniest of dispositions and a positive outlook on life.
With the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1963, the United States made a commitment to control air pollution. Several amendments were added to address air quality standards.
Prior to that, especially in the 1940s and 1950s, America experienced terrible air pollution events, including a lethal smog that blanketed Donora, Pennsylvania, in 1948.
Since then, strides have been made in terms of reducing criteria air pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides and lead.
People transitioned from wood-burning stoves to coal to industrial power plants with pollution prevention equipment, including scrubbers, precipitators and other best available control technologies.
Now, several power providers are shifting to renewable sources of energy such as solar, wind, hydro and even geothermal and tidal. All of these options do not involve combustion, the source of particulate matter in our air.
As to those western fires, thankfully rain looks like it is moving in and will help the firefighters battle the blazes and will help to improve the quality of the air, hopefully providing glimpses of blue sky to my sister, our friends and all the good people out west.