We’re at our farm in Northwest Oregon and it’s been a surreal few days with fires in nearly every direction — but luckily not on top of us. There has been untol

We’re at our farm in Northwest Oregon and it’s been a surreal few days with fires in nearly every direction — but luckily not on top of us. There has been untold devastation not very farm from here. The air quality has been oppressively bad — no sun for days, and two days of the strange orange glow. Communications during the firestorms has been lacking, especially compared with our experience in the Bay Area. I’ve had to rely on random twitter accounts, and local newspapers from outside our county to cobble together info on whether the fires were approaching us or not on a given night. Part of that is the nature of the event — lots of fires, and rapidly changing conditions, and overstretched resources. But a lesson from this is that rural Oregon sorely needs a strategy for clear comms during these firestorms. Local stories are bubbling up about people not getting evacuation orders, or getting contradictory information. Another part of this is infrastructure — no fiber or even DSL in a lot of these locations. Cell towers were up and down. Satellite internet was flaky. Grateful for our landline. The smoke hasn’t cleared yet, and massive fires are still going, but the weather is looking more favorable. Today was cooler and more humid and rain is expected by Monday evening. But when the smoke does clear, I’m afraid this will indeed be a great tragedy. Stay safe everyone.