Living In the Interface

The view from outside my window for the past several days has been dull, hazy and gray. Everyone in our family has a dry throat and several have a coughs. For the second year in a row we have been subjected to the smoke being belched into the air by uncontrolled Wildfires burning in the great state of California and this year in Oregon too.

We live in a rural valley where the wind blows regularly and the air was clear. The night sky, once dotted with thousands of stars and a view of the Milky Way is now a nondescript canvas of dark gray. The view is not my concern.

The local news reports “As of noon time on Monday, The Utah Department of Environmental Quality (UDEQ) says Davis and Carbon Counties are listed as unhealthy for sensitive groups and Salt Lake, Tooele, Uintah, and Cache Counties have moderate air quality.The DEQ says folks with asthma or heart disease are advised to limit time outside.”Most of the smaller Utah counties, like ours, do not have monitors so UDEQ's warnings rarely list us as problematic. While we have in fact been under a blanket of smoke for weeks, and were in a similar situation last summer. Their warning misses those with emphysema, allergies and other conditions that can be immediately affected by increased particulates in the atmosphere. While I am concerned about those with immediate impacts, that is not my only concern.

The Federal Government owns overly large tracts of land in the west. Those tracts have been mismanaged for decades and even now the BLM and Forest Service would rather spend millions fighting wildfires than invest those funds in mitigating fire in our forests. States like California would rather we spend millions fighting wildland fire, while they gain millions in tax money and handouts, bowing to developers high density plans in unsuitable areas. They are slow to adopt and enforce wildland codes that prohibit construction in the interface, or enforce codes which require adequate safe space between the wildlands and buildings, or adopt and enforce building set backs to limit fire spread between structures. The result each year is hundreds of homes being burned to the ground.

Yes we are in a drought. I have lived in drought conditions more often than not since I moved west. During times of drought wildland mitigation becomes even more urgent. In our area it is not uncommon to see prescribed burns as a means of managing wildfire. These may
work to an extent, but at what price for those forced to endure the multiple days of smoky skies that attend such activity ? There are other ways.

In the 1950's as our government tested nuclear weapons in the Nevada desert. Southern Utah citizens watched unaware and uninformed by their government of the hazards. Soldiers stood in the desert to experience the affect, oblivious to what the future would hold for them and their posterity. Decades later thousands began to show the affects of those tests, even though their government lead them to believe they were safe. My greatest fear is this; what affect will inhaling all this smoke have on my grandchildren? Are they destined to be the next down winder generation ? I am sure the powers that be would tell me that is not a concern even as they tout man caused global warming as a threat and prohibit cigarette smoking in public establishments.

We need a study, conducted by someone other than, and not funded by, our government. How much particulate and CO2 are put in the air by our uncontrolled forest burns ? How much does it contribute to man made global warming ? How safe are our children living under the gray cloud of Federal Forest mismanagement ? What are the likely long term results of exposing western children to the volumes of smoke being generated each year ? Without answers the future of our western children and their families remains in doubt.