Smokey, Smokey West.....FIRE!

Yes wildfire season is year-round in California, and Yosemite National Park is on the map this week. Satuday night two friends and I camped out accros the valley from Half-Dome, and we could barely see the valley floor because of all the smoke. We had no way of knowing at the time, besides the obvious smoke, that a huge fire west of the park was about to make headline news. Monday's edition of the Chronicle had the story front page above the fold with a good sized headline. It was bad. The air quality up there was just awful. It was even worse driving back to the Bay Area on Sunday morning. As we lost altitude going down highway 120, the smell of burning wood was unbearable. For about six or ten miles, I had to cover my mouth with my shirt so I could breathe.
Wild fires are terrible, terrible things. If you've never seen an out of control fire, it is a real fright. The feeling of helplessness is difficult to describe. My hands are shaking at the thought of a fire in the East Bay hills where I live. And I love fire; campfires and bonfires fascinate me. I was a cook for many years partly because of my relationship with fire I think. But a wild fire is horrible. I witnessed one in 2006 in San Rafeal, California on a hillside just above downtown. They had helicoptors swinging big buckets of bay water below them, trying to douse the flames. Airplanes flew overhead dumping that pink retardant on the fire.
Those guys are freakin' heroes because I could see the helicopter fly into the fire, realize he had the wrong angle, re-position himself, and dump the water and return to the bay for another round. I mean he's flying a helicopter into the fire! That's crazy! I watched in terror as the flames jumped out of the thinly treed hillside, and poured black smoke into the air. That hillside was just bone dry. It was like June or July so there hadn't been any rain for a long time, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The flames must have been 100 feet high. I don't know, but I'll take earthquakes anytime over wildfires.