Urgh

[sholio]

There's a pretty big wildfire north of town right now. It's not dangerous to us, and not likely to be - it's about 20 miles away and would have to go through a whole lot of subdivisions and the Trans-Alaska pipeline to get to us. However, the air quality is absolutely horrendous (I wore one of Orion's air-filter shop masks while I was doing garden work just now, because breathing hurts and makes your mouth taste like smoke), and it was raining ash and burnt spruce needles last night, although that seems to have mostly stopped for now.

I took a couple of pictures of the ashfall on the car last night around 11 p.m. or so.

Comments

[tippergreen]

Yikes! I guess, stay inside? I recall my friend NT describing what it was like living in Vancouver, Washington as a kid when Mt. St. Helen's blew. The idea of ash-fall is such a scary thing.

[sholio]

Yeah, I think today is a good day for staying inside! We're supposed to get rain this afternoon. We really could use it. (ETA: Oh hey, it just started raining before I posted this comment! I hope we get a good soaking one.)

There were a number of active volcanoes around the part of Alaska I grew up in, so I've also been in volcanic ash falls. That's a lot worse, because the ash particles are very abrasive and you're supposed to try not to inhale it. At least in this case, while it's not great for you, it's not terrible in the same way; it's just like breathing campfire smoke or something.

[kore]

I lived in CA when Mt St Helen's blew and NO LIE, my dad brought home some of the ashes from Kentucky Fried Chicken. I remember it vividly, it was one of those little plastic containers you got like coleslaw in, but it was full of volcanic ash. I thought for years I had hallucinated this or something, BUT NO. Apparently there was a store up by the volcano that got dumped on, they thought "Hey! Entrepreneurial opportunity!" and shoveled up like a couple dozen tons of it and and packaged it and shipped it off to NV and CA. Free if you got a bucket of chicken, otherwise you paid like a quarter or something. The stores ran out within days. I loved the ash and showed it off to my friends ("THAT's not ASH. You got that from your fireplace! You're makin it up!"). However my mother didn't want it in the house (she possibly thought it was radioactive? there is no superstitious person like a superstitious Hungarian) and quietly did away with it, the way she got rid of other stuff of ours she didn't like.

....ANYWAY yeah from what I remember it wasn't fine and dry like regular ashes. IIRC it was kind of thicker and darker and had an oily quality? Hard to be sure now, tho (THANKS MOM).

//possibly most pointless comment I have ever left which is really saying something

[sholio]

... omg, the Kentucky Fried Chicken thing is PURE GOLD. I am amazed. I wonder if anyone in Anchorage did that during the time when we were having a lot of eruptions down there (late 80s to early 90s, there were a bunch).

But yeah, the ash is extremely abrasive; it's basically bits of pulverized glass. It destroys airplane engines if they fly through a cloud of it, pretty much on contact (there was some flight that had its engines knocked out and had to make an emergency landing back in, I want to say the early 00s?). Anyway, when I was a kid we'd stuff towels around windows and doors to keep it from getting into the house and cover our mouths with a scarf if we had to actually go outside while it was falling.

Actually this makes me realize that this is one kind of natural disaster we haven't had much lately. *knocks on wood*

[kore]

It was SO WEIRD. Buy a bucket of chicken, get a miniature plastic cup of volcanic ash! WTF! Like, hail the true spirit of American capitalism? I guess?

But yeah, the ash is extremely abrasive; it's basically bits of pulverized glass. It destroys airplane engines if they fly through a cloud of it, pretty much on contact (there was some flight that had its engines knocked out and had to make an emergency landing back in, I want to say the early 00s?). Anyway, when I was a kid we'd stuff towels around windows and doors to keep it from getting into the house and cover our mouths with a scarf if we had to actually go outside while it was falling.

Holy shit that sounds like the really terrible London fogs that actually killed people. Only PLUS GLASS. Jesus.

[kore]

Ohhh man. I remember when there were horrible wildfires a while back, in CA and BC and even some parts of WA, and the ash just felt literally sickening. Do you guys have A/C??

[sholio]

We do! (It's relatively rare in Alaska, but we ended up getting a window-mounted unit during another hot, smoky summer a few years back, since it gets really miserable when you can't open the windows.) And we've got a couple of freestanding air filter units running inside, which is keeping the house not too bad. But still. bleh.

[ride_4ever]

I hope you can stay where the air quality isn't terrible. Do you know how many days this is expected to impact you?

[sholio]

No idea. We did get some rain this afternoon that knocked it down a bit!

Some summers are just like this. We've had pretty decent ones the last couple of years without a lot of close wildfires, but our luck was bound to run out eventually.

[lilacsigil]

I hope the rain continues and your breathing options improve!

[umadoshi]

Yikes. :( I'm glad you're not in danger, but that sounds so awful.

[sheron]

OMG! That sounds awful. Please stay inside because you can get chronic/permanent lung damage from this. *hugshugshugs*

[sovay]

I took a couple of pictures of the ashfall on the car last night around 11 p.m. or so.

Please keep breathing. Like, oxygen.

[used_songs]

So that's really scary! I'm glad you have a mask to wear to protect you.

[chomiji]

Oh no!

[madripoor_rose]

Oh dear!

I've always wondered, what do you do about letting the dog out with the ash in the air from a fire?

[sholio]

I don't worry about it. It's mainly only harmful to humans because of allergies/asthma and because it can long-term raise your risk of lung cancer, and for the dog, if he's not visibly suffering, then dogs don't live long enough for the second one to be an issue. It's not the kind of thing where it's actively and immediately harmful (like the volcanic ash mentioned above - that, I wouldn't want to let a dog out in, if I could help it).

[madripoor_rose]

Ah yes, that makes a lot of sense! There was a housefire three doors down when I was a kid, but I've never been anywhere near a big fire, so I was curious.

[sholio]

It's a good question though! I've occasionally wondered if I should worry about it, but I don't think it's that bad for them.

[lunabee34]

Oh, no. :(

That sounds so uncomfortable.

[abyssinia]

Oh man, that reminds me of the time in college when we sat in our dorm rooms doing homework and listening to the ash from the nearby forest fire hitting the ground. It's a freaky thing!

Good luck and stay safe.

[yalumesse]

Yuck :( There was a fire like that near us once. It started overnight, and I slept with an open window so I got to wake up to a smokey house. Joy. Hope you can lock it out of your place?

[rachelmanija]

Ah yes, that familiar post-apocalyptic glow. You have my utmost sympathies. I'd say you could come here if you like but...

[ratcreature]

That sounds awful. I hope conditions improve soon.

On the upside, at least you don't have a ton of unexploded ordinance in the ground? There's a big wildfire in the news here, for which they had to evacuate three villages and small towns, that they aren't getting under control, because the explosive risk of old mines and bombs means nobody can go near the fire to fight it, as the heat makes all that stuff explode continuously. And they try from the air, but they can't go low either but have to remain at least a thousand meter high for safety. Apparently they are now getting specialized army tanks to help.

[booksarelife]

Oh wow, that’s crazy!! Why do you have so much unexploded ordnance? I hope everyone’s as ok as they can be!

[ratcreature]

Well that area is particularly bad because it was both a dumping ground for WWII unused munitions shortly after the war, and then was an army target practice area for a while, so it's very contaminated. But it's pretty common all over Germany (other European countries too) and a usual risk for wildfires here to have some explosions.

You find rotting explosives in woods, in the sea, and then as flotsam on beaches, under cities surfacing during construction, in lakes, in fields... Last week I read in the news that a farmer had their field explode during the night because a delayed action chemical detonator that malfunctioned finally rotted through in a buried bomb. That still pretty rare, that they explode on their own, though getting more common as these age. They expect it will take another century before the WWII stuff is totally cleaned up, even though the disposal units gets rid of many tons every year and have been at it since right after the war. In my city we still have WWII bomb disposals with evacuations frequently. It would be really expensive to clear up areas like that forest when there's not even enough money and qualified people for higher priority areas where more people live.