“Hokey Smoke!”

August 18th, 2007
It’s all the rage around here these days… raging infernos that is. It’s been really dry around here lately, we haven’t had any rain, minus a tiny sprinkle, since we moved out here in July. And so it means that the forest is just a spark away from being a campfire. And so last week (Friday the 10th), during that short sprinkle, a lightning strike started a fire 20km away from us in the mountainous area south of the Pend D’orrielle River (pronounced “pond a ray”) and what seemed small and under control (250 hectares) went large on Thursday (up to 1700 hectares) due to wind. And now what was fairly harmless is threatening homes and families.

Here’s a few photos for perspective…

Thursday from the highway 1km away from the fire:

Friday AM looking towards the Pend D’Orrielle from downtown Trail… normally you can see the mountains on either side of the Columbia River Valley, but this day you could barely see across the river.

The latest reports have the fire 6km away from the community of Fruitvale and only 1km away from homes in the area. I work with people who live in Fruitvale, and we attend church with others who live there, so obviously this is a large concern.

So, as Aisha would say it, “Hokey Smoke!”

Oh yeah, speaking of smokin’, I’m really looking forward to a gig coming up soon… I’ll be joining Sheldon, Drew, Dave, & Andy as “Blacklight Prophet” at Rossfest on Thursday August 29th @ 9pm. Yep, it feels really good to be playing again.