the new normal.

[serafaery]

I wanted to mention, that as my nose continues to release these mysterious brown gelatinous chunks in the mornings, that it feels very odd to have lived through the smoke of the forest fires, here. Not to mention those who were effected by the fires themselves, that's a completely different level of disaster. But.

Portland had the worst air quality the world has ever known. As well as areas all along the west of Oregon, and northern California as well.

The pollution was literally off the scale. The government air quality rating literally said, "beyond the measurement of the AQI scale" when we checked our air quality index. All they could label it was "hazardous."

No one knows what the extent of the health repercussions of exposure will be, because no population ever recorded has ever had to endure that sort of pollution at length. That sort of air quality has never existed before.

People could start dropping dead of cancers, in years to come. Or who knows what.

I was only in it for four days. I escaped the worst of it. And I'm still feeling the effects. Our throats were sore for over a week, all three of us had hoarse voices and scratchy eyes for days, and we were just vaguely tired. And sad.

And nobody who wasn't here realizes, or cares. Nobody talks about it. The rest of the world is like, "Oh it was pretty smoky in the western US." They have no idea of the extent. People just browsed past headlines and articles and occasionally said "oh poor them" with no attempt to grasp of the extent of what happened, here.

Only those of us who were here will really ever understand.

And I didn't even stay for all of it.

Josh has been fond of saying, these past two weeks, "This year was the hottest year on record for forest fire season for California and Oregon. What they don't say is that this year was the coldest year on record for the next 100 years going forward."

He's not wrong.

Comments

[faeryboots]

Apparently Vancouver in Canada had the same hazardous smoke level as Portland, I read. Worst in the world. I can only imagine how bad that must have been not to have any escape into fresh air. There have been industrial fires in my area before where I had significant smoke inhalation that caused me months of coughing, wheezing, sore throat, headaches, etc from only a day or 2 exposure. So I can only imagine! Maybe look for some mullein tea, it helps to cleanse the lungs. Tons and tons and tons of water. 💕

[serafaery]

Thank you hon! I will look for the tea tomorrow <3 And try to get more water down. Thanks, thanks :)

[serafaery]

Ohyeah, and I did see the hazardous levels of smoke go all the way into Washington and Vancouver BC for close to a full week, that was really scary, that it was that widespread, I was so worried we were next, but Idaho stayed in the yellow range most of the time and then dropped down into green several days before Portland was finally clear, sigh.

[arethinn]

It my part of California it has "only" gotten up to the mid-200s both when we were bookended by the SCU and CZU fires, and a few weeks ago when smoke was traveling from elsewhere making all those orange sky pics you probably saw. I can barely imagine what an AQI twice that must be like.