The World on Fire
The entire west coast has been on fire for quite some time now. It's been awful since Labor day really. We've got a three stage system set up: Stage 1 is "you're on notice, start getting ready", Stage 2 is "be ready to leave at a moment's notice", and Stage 3 is "leave NOW".
We're not super close to any of the fires, but we're not that far away either. We're 15 miles from one of the smaller fires and we're about 40 miles from the giant fire that has burned a record number of acres in just a few days. We've been able to smell the smoke since Monday and as the days progressed we've been able to see the air quality decrease.
One of DH's college friends (Uncle Stinkybadass) was forced to evacuate because they were too close to the fire. The red picture at the top of this post was taken at his house with NO filters. He's got a baby that's only a few months old and he also lives with his mom, so he was obviously concerned with both of their abilities to breathe. Our place still had fairly decent air quality, so it was a good stopping point for them.
Here's a picture from our front door that same day (Wednesday) for comparison. You can tell there's a fire down that direction, but visibility was still pretty good. TerraDactyl was a bit shy at first when they showed up. She was pretty snuggly and clingy, but she eventually opened up to them. She got to the point that she would sneak into their bedroom just to spy on them. Or show Uncle Stinkybadass all the cool balls of yarn that I keep in the closet of the bedroom he stayed in.
The picture above is TerraDactyl being all sneaky and peaking around the corner to spy on our visitors. She's so funny. Uncle Stinkybadass and family spent the night at our house before continuing on to his sister's house. Our air quality was starting to decline and it was looking like it wasn't going to just be a quick evacuation, so they wanted to put a bit more distance between themselves and the fire.
We continued hanging out inside our house. TerraDactyl was unhappy about not being able to go outside to play or go for a walk. So she compensated by managing to get into new places in the house. Like at the beginning of the post, when she discovered where I keep my make up. She was sort of interested in the make up, but the real find was the bag I kept it in. She carried that all over the house.
She also wanted to try some new fashion choices, like this swim diaper on the outside of her onesie. She REALLY liked that. Like waaay too much. She insisted on that all day Thursday and even tried to talk me into it on Friday. I had to hide that swim diaper so she'd drop the subject.
TerraDactyl has discovered that some of her dolls have shoes and socks that come off. She was so excited to try them on. Of course they're way too small, but I could not talk her out of trying to wear them. She insisted on trying them all on.
TerraDactyl ALSO managed to give herself a bloody lip while napping. Napping! Obviously, she wasn't actually sleeping at the time. She often spends at least part of nap time playing with her stuffed animals or wandering around her crib. So I think she was probably walking around the crib and tripped and bit her lip.
The air quality at home started to get bad enough that we started toying with the idea of spending the weekend elsewhere so TerraDactyl's lungs could get a break. As we left town visibility was about half a mile. (The picture above is at a rest stop after we'd been driving for 2.5 hours -- away from the fires.) The EPA has a website where you can check the air quality Index at different locations:
0-50: Good
51-100: Moderate
101-150: Unhealthy for sensitive groups
151-200: Unhealthy
201-300: Very unhealthy
301-500: Hazardous
When we left home, our index was 270 (very unhealthy). We got three hours into a four hour trip to my parents' house when we discovered that my parents' town went from 77 to 537 (which you'll notice is BEYOND hazardous) during our drive. It was crazy! So, we decided not to stop there. We just kept driving another 4 hours to stay with DH's parents. Their air quality index was only 93 (which is still moderate). We just had to get 400 miles away from home. There was a steady stream of traffic leaving town with us. A lot of people were in RVs or towing camper trailers, probably because they didn't have a convenient place to crash like we did.
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