Sunday, September 8, 2019

Impressions from a fire zone

   
This is Camp Caswell the way I prefer to remember it.
I went to the East Pole Saturday Sept. 7, to bring back a couple of things and take some measurements for some improvements I want to make here to take out when I go for the winter.
     The driving part of the trip is mostly along the Parks Highway, the main ground link between Anchorage and Fairbanks, and also the site of a huge wildfire that burned over 3,288 acres and is still smoldering in places. The fire destroyed 52 primary residences, three commercial properties and 84 outbuildings, but so far no reported injuries or deaths.
     On the road north coming out of Willow the first indications of fire are the rows of blackened spruce trunks lining the roadway on both sides,. only these were from a a previous fire a couple of years ago. It took a moment to realize it.
     After another 10 miles the first indications of this fire became painfully obvious. At almost every driveway or public building signs thanked the fire crews over and over again. It was heart warming. It hit me we don't have many public figures to cheer these days and seeing the outpouring of gratitude for the effort put out by the firefighters was monumental.
     Soon enough I started to pass blackened spruce trees still standing but obviously burned, lining the roadside.
   Then came the yards with houses still standing but brush and trees cleared around them, taken by the men and women of the fire crews so there was no fuel for the fire as it progressed toward the buildings. This was the south end of the fire which burned after the massive mobilizations of people and equipment to fight the flames. The bulk of the damage  occurred toward the north end around Mile 91 and several miles south of there. In that area the fire burned more freely and destroyed more buildings before the crews arrived in any number.
     I passed several houses untouched by the fire in the center of the wide, cleared areas made by firefighters that saved them from the flames.
    As I craned to look into each yard I managed to wander from side to side in my lane. That's when I learned something else. The sound of tires rolling over those safety rumble strips at the road edges blend perfectly with the more ethereal of Pink Floyd instrumentals and it took a moment to realize some of the sound wasn't coming from the stereo. I think Roger Waters' 70th birthday was yesterday or today; should I let him know about this discovery of a complementary sound the group could use?
      Symbols that demonstrated the tremendous amount of work that went on were everywhere. Of course there were the cleared yards, but also piles of spruce trunks cut for fire lines or whatever other reason lined the road for miles — tons. Here's a heartening image, very selfish and personal I admit. Almost all the downed trees were spruce and among those still standing white birch trunks stood out among the blackened spruce as if untouched by the fire. I noticed there were not nearly as many birch in the piles of cut trees as well. Why heartening? The majority of the forest around the East Pole is old growth birch, apparently more fire resistant than their softer-wooded cousins. Maybe that will save me if a fire eventually starts up in my country which is about 30 miles from the northernmost limit of the McKinley fire.
     Farther north I came through the area hardest hit. Yards that had held homes looked like landfills, the possessions of a lifetime reduced to blackened trash by the fire.
     Excavators worked in several yards clearing what the fire left behind and groups of firefighters remained looking for what I assumed were hot spots and directing water streams from fire hoses.
     For perhaps five miles, the speed limit had been reduced to a double-fine-enforced 45 mph and signs all over the place warned travelers about fire equipment in the road.
     Particularly sad was the property where the Camp Caswell  establishment had stood. That's it in its former grandeur in the photo above, long a landmark aside that part of the road, the space it had filled now looks like a combination of a bomb crater and an auto salvage yard, the charred skeletons of several vehicles decorating the bleak landscape.
     In one clearing stood the yellowish wood framing skeleton of a someone's new cabin going up already. On the news later I heard a 68-year-old man talking about hearing explosions from his cabin letting him know everything was gone. He wondered aloud about rebuilding from scratch again in his life and wondering if his aging body can do it. As a man approaching 77 years, I wondered if I would have the strength and will to do that. I thought of a couple boxes of ammunition in my own cabin and for a moment wondered what that would sound like going up. Something you don't often think of when you see the people fighting those fires in buildings, knowing just about every dwelling in that area holds a gun or two and that means live rounds to explode while they worked.
     Flaggers protected the entry from a side road where a sign warned drivers "Fire equipment crossing" and then the speed limit rose to 55 then 65 and those of us on the road passed out of the fire zone, humbled somewhat by what we'd seen and the dirge-like tones of one of those Pink Floyd instrumentals with the haunting sounds of their lingering guitar licks creating an atmosphere of mourning for what was lost there. Then, too, there was that one ray of human resilience rising from the skeletal framework of that one new dwelling rising.

I couldn't stop to take pictures. This link will take you to a gallery of photos of the fire area from the Anchorage Daily News.
Complete McKinley fire roundup

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Best headlines ever

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In Southcentral Alaska earthquake, damage originated in the ground, engineers say

A headline that could only be written in Alaska: At state cross country, Glacier Bears and Grizzlies sweep, Lynx repeat, Wolverines make history — and a black bear crosses the trail

Man kills self before shooting wife and daughter

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Sister hits moose on way to visit sister who hit moose.

Man caught driving stolen car filled with radioactive uranium, rattlesnake, whiskey

Man loses his testicles after attempting to smoke weed through a SCUBA tank

Church Mutual Insurance won't cover Church's flood damage because it's 'an act of God'

Homicide victims rarely talk to police

Meerkat Expert Attacked Monkey Handler Over Love Affair with Llama Keeper

GOP congressman opposes gun control because gay marriage leads to bestiality

Owner of killer bear chokes to death on sex toy

Support for legalizing pot hits all-time high

Give me all your money or my penguin will explode

How zombie worms have sex in whale bones

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Woman shot by oven while trying to cook waffles

Nude beach blowjob jet ski fight leads to wife's death

Woman stabs husband with squirrel for not buying beer Christmas Eve

GOPer files complaint against Democrat for telling the truth about Big Lie social posts

Man shot dead on Syracuse Street for 2nd time in 2 days

Alaska woman punches bear in face, saves dog

Johnny Rotten suffers flea bite on his penis after rescuing squirrel

Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

Sports malaprops

Commenting on an athlete with hearing impairment he said the player didn’t show any “uncomfortability.” “He's not doing things he can't do."

"… there's a fearlessment about him …"

"He's got to have the lead if he's going to win this race." "

"Kansas has always had the ability to score with the basketball."

"NFL to put computer chips in balls." Oh, that's gotta hurt.

"Now that you're in the finals you have to run the race that's going to get you on the podium."

"It's very important for both sides that they stay on their feet."

This is why you get to hate sportscasters. Kansas beats Texas for the first time since 1938. So the pundits open their segment with the question "let's talk about what went wrong." Wrong? Kansas WON a football game! That's what went RIGHT!

"I brought out the thermostat to show you how cold it is here." Points to a thermometer reading zero in Minneapolis.

"It's tough to win on the road when you turn the ball over." Oh, really? Like you can do all right if you turn the ball over playing at home?

Cliches so embedded in sportscasters' minds they can't help themselves: "Minnesota fell from the ranks of the undefeated today." What ranks? They were the only undefeated team left.

A good one: A 5'10" player went up and caught a pass off a defensive back over six feet tall. The quote? "He's got some hops."

Best homonym of the day so far: "It's all tied. Alabama 34, Kentucky 3." Oh, Tide.

"Steve Hooker commentates on his Olympic pole vault gold medal." When "comments" just won't do.

"He's certainly capable of the top ten, maybe even higher than that."

"Atlanta is capable of doing what they're doing."

"Biyombo, one of seven kids from the Republic of Congo." In the NBA? In America? In his whole country?

"You can't come out and be aggressive but you can't come out and be unaggressive."

"They're gonna be in every game they play!"

"First you have to get two strikes on the hitter before you get the strikeout."

"The game ended in the final seconds." You have to wonder when the others ended or are they still going on?

How is a team down by one touchdown before the half "totally demoralized?"

"If they score runs they will win."

"I think the matchup is what it is"

After a play a Houston defender was on his knees, his head on the ground and his hand underneath him appeared to clutch a very sensitive part of the male anatomy. He rolled onto his back and quickly removed his hand. (Remember the old Cosby routine "you cannot touch certain parts of your body?") Finally they helped the guy to the sideline and then the replay was shown. In it the guy clearly took a hard knee between his thighs. As this was being shown, one of the announcers says, "It looks like he hurt his shoulder." The other agrees and then they both talk about how serious a shoulder injury can be. Were we watching the same game?

"Somebody is going to be the quarterback or we're going to see a new quarterback."

"That was a playmaker making a play.”