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British Columbia declares a state of emergency amid devastating wildfires
- mcpackieh 3y agohttps://fire.airnow.gov/ https://fire.airnow.gov/ So far, air quality in the PNW isn't too bad, this is barely notable compared to past years. Hopefully it stays this way.
- DeRock 3y agoAbout half of Washington has an AQI over 300. The coast is mostly clear, but it will depend on how the wind trends. These latest south central BC fires only really grew in the last 48 hours too.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoSeattle has an AQI of 109 ATM, much if Washington lives in that region. Spokane in contrast is at 289 ATM. If forests are burning primarily in Eastern BC, the mountains couod save us.
- brightsize 3y agoI'm in Spokane, and on the PurpleAir website there are readings >500 all around, even in the city, which is not (yet) burning. The air outside is subjectively awful, the worst I can recall in 20 years living here. I'll be holing-up today with fans/filters running, not that it will do much good. What's burning, at least nearby, is not forests AFAIK, it's grasslands.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoI used aqicn, so maybe its dataset isn’t as accurate. But anything close to 300 is going to feel uncomfortable, 500 unbearable. I’ve been exposed to 1000 in Beijing before that really sucked. Good luck out there.
- brightsize 3y agoThanks. I'm fortunate not to live in Medical Lake or nearby, where the most destructive fires (in terms of $damage$ anyway) are still ongoing. I know little about these air quality sites, how accurate they are, or if they are all measuring the same things in a normalized way. I just latched on to the PurpleAir info, as I'd at least once seen the site favorably mentioned here on HN and the UI is pretty tolerable to me. If the world is going to burn around me I should probably study-up on such things rather than, oh, on the latest Scala db access lib. :-) The local media is referencing aqi.in as a source, not sure if this is related to your aqicn one: "SPOKANE, Wash. - Five of the top ten cities with the worst air quality in the world are in the Spokane Metro area, according to aqi.in. Mead sits at number one with an AQI of 502. Spokane is number four with an AQI of 444. Airway Heights is ranked sixth with an AQI of 426. Spokane Valley sits at number eight with an AQI 392. Cheney is sitting at number ten with an AQI of 370." https://inx.lv/mi5K https://inx.lv/mi5K [khq.com] The outside light this afternoon was truly dim due to the haze - I could see smoke in the air less than 50' away. Eyes watering, awful smell ... I can't imagine what that AQI=1000 Beijing experience would have been like ... almost seems non-survivable, at least if it's the same sort of pollutants. We're getting organic ash (yes, we paid xtra for it!) from grass/trees/shrubbery &etc but also getting the combustion products from hundreds of houses+vehicles that have gone up in flames over the past few days. All kinds of plastics and rubber and electronics ingredients I would think. I haven't heard if all this is going to blow towards Seattle or PDX but if it does they're not gonna be happy. We'll have to figure out how to blame it on Canadians if it does cross the Cascades.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoI live in Seattle but just started a two week trip to Tokyo, so hopefully it’s all done when we get back. I have lots of family in Spokane, and my cousin was posting a fire evacuation map on Facebook from around near where he lives. An AQI of 1000 typically means a dust storm in Beijing blowing in from the Gobi desert, or, conversely, very stagnant air with almost no wind. It’s a weird experience, but survivable.
- loeg 3y agoI don't know what source you're looking at but I'm seeing AQI in the 30s for Seattle right now, and ~300 east of the cascades. The wind is blowing out of the east and Seattle's air will get a lot worse this evening, but it isn't 110 yet.
- soultrees 3y agoSun is looking pretty orange today in Vancouver.
- singingboyo 3y agoYou can see the sun? All I see is grey smoke slowly settling down on us. It's going to suck for a couple days, I think.
- beej71 3y agoIt's not the worst ever in central Oregon, but it's between bad and really bad. Today's an improvement from yesterday, when I drove 45 minutes north to walk the dog someplace with an AQI under 200.
- UncleOxidant 3y agoYeah, so far it's been good this year in the Portland area... but there's still another month+ of fire season to go. IIRC the 2020 fires flared up in September and we had terrible air quality for at least a week.
- channel_t 3y agoYup, and 2020 was downright apocalyptic, with AQI readings so hazardous they basically went off the charts. Also worth noting that last year the bad air quality in Portland didn't really start until October and stopped during the final days of it, so we can reasonably expect a solid 2 months left of smoke season still.
- pchristensen 3y agohttps://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2023/08/smoke-and-tropical-storm-hilary.html?m=1 https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2023/08/smoke-and-tropical-st... Heads up.
- ipcress_file 3y agoI'm in southern BC and my AQI is 401. Burnt embers are falling on the lawn and driveway. It's a lovely day.
- grecy 3y agoThe capital city of the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife, is also under a full evacuation order. That is 62 degrees from the equator, 20,000 people. Air quality in much of Western Canada is horrific.
- swader999 3y agoDecades of crappy fuel management and cancelling their rapid attack helicopter crews didn't help.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jml7c5 3y agoI believe it was Alberta that ended rapattack, not BC.
- swader999 3y agoThey both did.
- soupbowl 3y agoI am a logger that actually did fuel management in these specific areas, it is a very important thing that politics has made a mess of. That being said it has nothing to do with what is happening here right now. Some of the places burning are places fuel management has been done and some of these places already burned up a few times over the last 10 years. Also helicopters are not our problem heavy winds was grounding them anyways.
- swader999 3y agoAppreciate your comment. At the moment wind is wreaking havoc but these fires were small for several days before they grew this large. A quick reaction would have saved so much effort and expense and grief.
- soupbowl 3y agoI am not sure of which fires you are speaking of specifically, but the fires around my city were taken seriously right away. The ground type, location, wind and night are what escalated things. On another note, fire is a natural part of a forests life. If we rush to put out everything which is not near cities or buildings, we are just pushing things back until the next fire in the area is even worse. It is better for the forest to burn a bit.
- matteoraso 3y agoScientists start to discover that the Earth is warming "Maybe they're wrong." Scientists develop sophisticated models that show the dangers of global warming "We'll deal with it before it becomes a problem." The catastrophic consequences are now being felt on a regular basis "Okay, it's definitely time for gradual, market-based solutions to global warming."
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JimtheCoder 3y agoTo be fair, blaming these wildfires on global warming when proper forest management techniques aren't being used and resources are being cut sort of contributes to this phenomenon...doesn't it?
- mistrial9 3y ago"things people got away with before" are now no longer optional.. as if the extra-safety cushions have been used up and are gone.. seems very predictable, and not either-or at all..
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoThere is aloooot of forest in Canada. You can properly manage some of it near populated places, but it is simply infeasible to directly or indirectly manage even most of it.
- tadfisher 3y agoThe Cascades didn't always consist of endless acres of Douglas Fir and sword ferns. As the glaciers receded, the indigenous tribes and the natural fire ecology maintained oak savanna where there is now dense forest and fuel buildup. I agree with your point, but just wanted to point out that the land was manageable before we allowed most of it to turn into forest.
- beej71 3y ago
- matrix_overload 3y agoFor anyone getting an emotional response and willing to blame climate change deniers, here's some dry government statistics on Canadian forest fires [0]. The number of fires over the past 4 decades is trending down. The numbers for area burned looks like each time there's a peak, it burns out enough fuel to make subsequent years easier. There were a couple of peaks in 1980s/1990s, but nothing that big recently. Also, notably, the area burnt is lowest during recession years and COVID lockdown year. So when people could not afford to go camping/ATVing, the amount of fires was drastically less. Climate change probably does play some role here, but so does the 20% population increase in BC over the last 2 decades. So, the correct question to ask is "what can we do as a reasonable trade-off to reduce the number of fires in the future without compromising the quality of life?". And the correct answer is "educate people on how to spot hazardous terrain and contain the fires they accidentally started". Requiring fire extinguishers at campsites/ATVs could help. Doing some training would help. Doing controlled burns would help. Renaming Environment Canada to "Environment and Climate Change Canada| and closing down local production in favor of Chinese imports won't. [0] https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/ha/nfdb https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/ha/nfdb
- nonethewiser 3y agoWhat about telling children they are doomed? Wont that help?
- Fricken 3y agoI don't understand why telling children they are doomed is regarded as worse than actually dooming them.
- throwawaysleep 3y agoOne is far in the future and they won’t be around to hear them anymore.
- goatlover 3y agoIt's worse when you're not actually dooming them, but you are discouraging them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Ylpertnodi 3y agoAnyone got an update on how facebook is doing in BC?
- soupbowl 3y agoLocal news sites are blocked on Facebook but it didn't really matter, people used Facebook groups to pass better Info around.
- xrd 3y agoI was born almost fifty years ago in Oregon. Growing up I never remember another event like the fires of 2020. Is this just me misremembering? Is there something fundamentally different about the smoke now compared to then? Was it all heightened three years ago because of social media and wouldn't have been as impactful in the newspaper era? Do any other Pacific Northwest natives recall smoke like there is lately? I'm reading a lot of the comments and believe that this isn't the worst of the last forty years but my memory tells me differently and I'm wondering how I could be so off.
- karaterobot 3y agoI've lived in Seattle for 25-30 years, and I think prior to the last ~5 years, the smoke from wildfires making it to the city was a much more rare event. Maybe once every few years, rather than every year. And it didn't last nearly as long, nor was there as much smoke.
- jjulius 3y agoNative of 30+ years. The last ~5 years are absolutely an anomaly. They've always been present, yes, especially towards the eastern side of the Cascades, but the past few years have felt like a different beast.
- elihu 3y agoI don't think we've had anything like the 2020 fires in a long time (though the 2017 Gorge fire was pretty bad). Maybe the Tillamook burn was comparable? Field burning used to be a more common thing though, so it was a regular annual occurrence that you'd have a lot of smoke in the air during field burning season.
- bosquefrio 3y agoNative Portlander here. It was sometime in the mid 2010s that we started to have the orange haze from forest fires here. However that week in the summer of 2020 was definitely the worst I have ever seen it here. There is a building about fifty feet away from mine and I could not see it because the smoke was that thick.
- ipcress_file 3y ago
- soupbowl 3y agoI am in between a few of the fires in southern bc. My friends are mostly evacuated with a few on alert. Yesterday was scary because of high winds, houses have been lost. Today the air quality is terrible, my deck furniture was covered in ash this morning. Fire here has always been common, the most common pine tree requires fire to open it's pine cones. Fires starting here always sparks climate change battles. The reality is that there has and will always be fire here.
- ipcress_file 3y agoHey neighbour! I'm a few km outside the evacuation zones for the Adams Lake fires. We've packed the car, just in case. Take care.
- reilly3000 3y agoI was in Nelson BC for the past couple of days. AQI was in the 200’s most of the time, the red was shining a reddish hue. Kelowna is in great danger and US side was worse, with the city of Medical Lake having been completely destroyed today. The interstate is closed and lots of ranch animals had to be let loose and are wandering about.
- cf100clunk 3y agoEarlier comments contain some good links to current situational info, so I'm tossing these online wildfire map links into the mix: Canada: BC Wildfire Service's Wildfire Map: https://wildfiresituation.nrs.gov.bc.ca/map https://wildfiresituation.nrs.gov.bc.ca/map BC Air Quality Health Index: https://www.env.gov.bc.ca/epd/bcairquality/readings/find-stations-map.html https://www.env.gov.bc.ca/epd/bcairquality/readings/find-sta... NWT Live Fire Map: https://www.gov.nt.ca/ecc/en/services/wildland-fire-update/nwt-live-fire-map https://www.gov.nt.ca/ecc/en/services/wildland-fire-update/n... Alberta Wildfire Map: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/3ffcc2d0ef3e4e0999b0cf8b636defa3 https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/3ffcc2d0ef3e4e0999b0c... USA: WA & OR Fire Map: https://gacc.nifc.gov/nwcc/firemap.php https://gacc.nifc.gov/nwcc/firemap.php ID Fire Map: https://idfg.idaho.gov/ifwis/maps/realtime/fire/ https://idfg.idaho.gov/ifwis/maps/realtime/fire/
- cf100clunk 3y agoYT Wildfires Current Situation: https://wildfires.service.yukon.ca/ https://wildfires.service.yukon.ca/ MT Interactive Fire Map: https://mtdnrc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=6bea18851bec440d9260cb0d28f53281/ https://mtdnrc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?...
- brightsize 3y agoSock it to us, BC. "OKANOGAN COUNTY, Wash. — The Crater Creek fire, that has burned an estimated 54,000 acres in British Columbia, has entered into Okanogan County." https://inx.lv/mi5t https://inx.lv/mi5t
- jjulius 3y agoWe keep trading fires. The Eagle Bluff fire started near Oroville in late July and quickly crossed the border into Osoyoos. Someone grabbed this[0] eerie shot of the town of Osoyoos across from Osoyoos Lake. [0]https://nwhikers.org/forums/uploads/22/76/zl8qe.jpg https://nwhikers.org/forums/uploads/22/76/zl8qe.jpg
- pedalpete 3y agohttps://archive.is/WlR51 https://archive.is/WlR51