Smoke in Our Air and Fire in Our Life

by Dr. Gabriella Kőrösi

The only thing that I can see around me are hazy trees and roads. The air quality has been getting worse and worse the last few days. Normally, I would be able to see between the Oregon to Washington state line. I would be able to watch the rolling hills and mountains in Washington state and the ships passing by on the Columbia River. None of those things can be seen now.  One could imagine a thick fog, but it is not. I would be able to breathe through fog. Even the naturally vibrant evergreen trees seem to be blurred and out of focus. Stepping outside the front porch and driving to work yesterday morning I felt this overwhelming doom. The environment looked very sad. I could not see the sun, there was just a dim light through the smoke and a faint circle of light instead of the glorious glowing rays. I was wondering if our Earth is trying to tell us something. It feels like a fight for our existence. We are dealing with an uncontrolled pandemic, raging fires, unhealthy and hazardous air.

What will be next? Is Earth trying to kick us out? We can’t breathe the air, we can’t socialize, there is not enough clean water, our lands are being destroyed and people have to be evacuated. Wildfires are everywhere including the Arctic Circle called “zombie fire”.  The Smithsonian reported a few days ago that the emissions from this fire is about 244 megaton carbon this year so far compared to 181 megatons in 2019 (Fox, 2020). There is no way to control it. Fires are record high this year and currently there are 133 fires across the United States with 48 of those fires are not contained at this time (ARCGIS, 2020).  I have friends and colleagues who are getting calls from family to see if they could be a part of their evacuation plan. I am getting calls from my family and friends checking on us making sure things are not burning where I am.

Is this how it is going to be? More and more natural disasters? I had a conversation with a friend yesterday who mentioned that she was surprised that there are not even more fires with all the people who are throwing out cigarette buds from their cars. I did observe one of those fires on the side of the road while traveling along I-5 last week. Today, I feel that my eyes are dry and itchy, my sinuses and head are hurting, my throat is scratchy, I can feel that my lungs are not happy, and I am coughing up phlegm occasionally. My voice is raspy. My mucus membranes are irritated and dry because of the smoke. I feel like I continuously have to drink fluids to soothe my throat. It does not seem to be helping. It just hurts.

 Looking at the fire maps of Oregon in our area the air is declared unhealthy now. There are areas where the fire is so bad that the air is hazardous. Not breathable. The public health recommendation is to stay indoors, close doors and windows and use a filtration system. Well, the smoke creeps indoors and not everyone has a filtration system. People with any disadvantages, lower socioeconomic status and battling with any immunological or lung disease will be more effected by the smoke. It does not help that we are already in a middle of a pandemic with raging COVID -19 everywhere.  Sheltering is more difficult in this situation.

Stores are sold out of air purifiers. People are being upset. Hurt. Confused. I am hoping for rain. I hope that it will come soon and bring some relief in these fires. It is a weird cycle for sure. We need trees to produce oxygen, yet now they are burning and cannot help us, other times we cut them down disrupting the natural water cycle. Trees evaporate water that goes into our atmosphere and comes back down as rain. Every year we have millions of acres of forests lost by fire. Every year we destroy more of our forests by cutting down more trees. We literally stopping our oxygen and water supply.

How long humanity can survive like this? Maybe we could plant a tree as often as we can and stop creating more damage to our Earth and surrounding environments. Maybe there is some hope for our future generations to survive on this planet. There are a lot of good people and organizations that are trying to help and make things better by recycling, reusing products, decreasing waste. Creating rain drops by one good action at a time.

I hope you will be one of those people.

I am thankful our planet, our existence and I am grateful for each and every person. 

www.gabriellakorosi.org

References

ARCGIS (2020)  retrieved from https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wildfire/#@=-97.366,38.34,5

Fox, Alex (2020) retrieved from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/arctic-wildfires-have-already-emitted-more-carbon-entirety-2019-180975747/