Sunday, Aug 3
Fire watch all day today. Early morning we went around the rural block to check on the fire’s progress. Lots of smoke — and throughout the day, the fire fighting concentrated on Wilson Creek canyon with air support from copters with water buckets and tankers with retardant.
For an explanation of the retardant dropped from planes (as seen on John’s placeholder for this weekend), you can go here. For great photos, here are 2 by our friends, Cec & Dean Van Epps — they are horse folk/friends and live about 5 miles to the southwest.
and the plane doing a drop:
We took a trip around the yard to see a few things. John had picked onions several days ago and has placed them on the hay in the pole barn to dry.
Then later he decided to pick blueberries.
We’ll have to wash the smoke/ashes off.
Monday, Aug 4
Staying home today, but need to find out about my lung specialist’s evaluation. Medical records are very frustrating and part of a non-functional medical database system, in our estimation. I called early morning to check to see if the report from the lung specialist had made it to the cardiologist I’m supposed to see tomorrow morning. Nope. That has been fixed now, and they have my fasting blood draw records from last week too, which were sent.
Happy to say I managed to cut John’s hair today. A long awaited and much needed task.
Tuesday, Aug 5
We took John’s Subaru in for a 3,000 mile service and oil change at 11:15 – prior to medical stuff (both in Yakima). Be at the doctor (Pham) at 12:40 check-in for 1:00 appt. Went by Costco and got a tank of gas at 20¢ per gallon less than in EBRG; otherwise we did not buy much. On the way home we stopped for long distance fire photos of the north side of the valley from the viewpoint on I-82; a newly made friend we met at the end of our driveway shared a better one than mine so we are using Steve Maeder’s photo:
When we got closer to home on Wilson Creek Road, I took a movie from several miles south from where we live. It is only 18 seconds but shows what the view was from the valley.
Smoke as seen from the trip home.
Steve was just to our NW traveling on Charlton Road (going east) when he took the photo below. A few minutes later he pulled into our driveway – south of the plume. Naneum Canyon shows only as the little notch on the left of the photo – smoke hides the rest of it.
This is what I saw from the road at the driveway:
Steve got a photo of a Ponderosa Pine going up.
Burning embers from such episodes can land hundreds of yards away and start a new fire. Repeat this several times and the fire moves across the land rapidly. John and I went back to the road after dark and it looked like this:
Wednesday, Aug 6
John went to Issaquah, Squak Mountain Trail, where WTA hosted a crew of SCA young folks plus 2 older leaders from SCA, The Student Conservation Association.
He picked up donuts for the crew, and met a friend whom we’ve known since 1974, who lives nearby. They got about a 20-minute visit at the trailhead.
I went to the Food Bank and home to watch the fire’s progress and report on it, as follows: I just returned from town and the area is still very active all across the hills to the north — so is the radio-scanner with activity and the copters are good in number with buckets. Heard too they brought in a bunch of dozers at midnight to make a line on the south (from west to east) — winds unfortunately are still high, and in the valley are usually from the NW except for a couple hours as WNW. The plume there yesterday is building again. Just heard a big DC-10 Tanker (with retardant) fly right over us so that’s good they are back. We continue our thanks to all the firefighters and official personnel on this fire. Supposedly, the count is well over 500 folks.
They are currently making an aggressive plan for protecting structures in Cooke Canyon (heard at 2:40); however, the fire never went farther than the upper reaches of Schnebly Canyon. Coleman Canyon is the next one east, and then Cooke Canyon, which in the lower areas is full of homes, although still classed as rural.
There is a DNR crew working on protecting the several houses at the lower end of the Naneum Canyon (north of us 1.5 miles), and many small copters and a few larger ones are flying. They covered the hill NNE of us with retardant after I returned home. It was interesting and a bit worrisome to see the fire and how it is being fought. Naneum Canyon is a temporary home to several hundred (domestic) sheep during summer – these were quickly brought to a pasture just at the point where the canyon opens to be the Naneum Fan. Today they brought them on down the road. At 4 PM, John met them about ¼ mile from our driveway. The protocol is to pull to the side and let them go by. As I, and neighbors, watch the action from our driveway we are feeling less anxious. A major wind shift could have put all of us in danger, but the fire is going east and not south. They have a ton of rigs up there. Above Charlton (next cross-road north of us) on Naneum, at two friends they have a unit (engine) right on site, and have since yesterday. True, the winds are still blowing.
John and I walked to the end of the driveway to check on the smoldering hillsides and canyons we can see. Surprised to see no flames, as we still had some visible this afternoon about 1:30 when I came home and by John as well about 4:30.
Thursday, Aug 7
Music at Royal Vista. We had a large turnout and many thanks for our music from several residents. They had two kinds of cookies (homemade) for us at the end. I took my peanut butter cookies home to share with John.
Including watching the fire, I watched two fawns and two does, but only got a movie of one of the fawns. John has been cutting a few apple and cherry limbs (pruning) each evening and the deer will show up as soon as he gets out of the way – sometimes they think he doesn’t leave fast enough.
Full day and night of fire watching. Night from the end of our driveway was exciting. Met several neighbors from around the block and farther. We have a wide spot to pull into and a clear view of all but the western end of the front hills.
Friday, Aug 8
John to Asahel Curtis Nature Trail, WTA, left at 5:35 a.m. for morning breakfast with the some of the crew – about 10. Here are views of the work site from the parking lot. A new higher bridge has been set in. The trail is to be compliant with ADA (wheelchairs, and so on) so the approach to the bridge deck is being filled with large rocks (later to be topped with packed gravel) and lengthened with a gentle grade. On the right, Bob is gathering the parts of a rotten log and will move it up the trail for side dressing of the rock wall. John is taking a break from uncovering a boulder (seen behind Bob’s butt). Once sufficiently uncovered the rock will be drilled and a small explosive inserted. An experienced Forest Service trail worker will do this mid-week and another WTA work party will clean up and grade as necessary. Later, John found another large rock just about where Bob’s right knee is. It too will get the “boulder buster” treatment. The old trail went to the left of the 2 trees between Bob and John, then dropped some before starting up to the old bridge. With the new bridge being higher, the entire approach needed to be realigned and made a more gentle slope.
Fire report is good for us. Closest fire is 4 miles NE. I was in my car at the end of the driveway watching fires in two canyons directly across and on the ridges between, all the time talking on my cell phone with my neighbor two houses north. I had a slightly better view than he did, but we both could see the copter drops (and the fire surges).
See below for the afternoon flare up in one of the canyons we had watched burn last night, and thought both were clear this morning. Wrong.
Saturday, Aug 9
Just heard on the scanner from the hills north, “This is rough going, slow down and keep moving so hopefully we can get down with kidneys still intact.” The firefighters somehow manage to keep a positive attitude and their sense of humor. Interesting conversations between ground and aerial crews. Obviously, I only hear a couple of the frequencies, but still a lot of information.
While I was trying to do get some time on the computer a few birds found the Nanking Cherries at our back door. The fruit is bright red and like most of the other fruitful things this year, they are in abundance. [an aside: WA apple growers are expecting a record crop] These birds fit the description of juvenile Cedar Waxwings as they are missing the distinctive markings of the adult birds. See what you think.
Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan