My family’s world is one of smoke and fire today.
Our family has a home down the hill from Shaver Lake, CA near the base of the escarpment of the High Sierra, in the shadow of Black Mountain. Black Mountain is pine forest and it used to be green. But five years of drought weakened the trees, killing some of them. The warmer winters allowed bark beetles - normally dormant in sub-freezing winters - to kill off thousands of trees out our back window. Two years ago, Black Mountain turned brown - from dead trees. The whole area above us is a tinderbox.
Yesterday, they closed off Route 168 eastbound, the four-lane road up the mountain. The closure point is in Prather, a little more than a mile from our place. It's closed to all but emergency vehicles.
And now, they’ve ordered a mandatory immediate evacuation of the popular mountaintop resort town of Shaver Lake, in the middle of the Labor Day weekend. Everybody has to get out of Dodge. Now.
Route 168 is the road down the mountain and out of town, but it’s a two lane road twisting and turning through the mountains for five miles before it turns into a four lane down hill.
I'm worried about the health of our family members who are having to breathe in all that smoke. We talked about this yesterday, and they headed over to the hardware store and picked up a second air purifier for the bedroom. That’s all they can do for now, because all the hotels in Fresno are full, and the evacuation center is filled. And the fire is on the mountaintop, still a dozen miles away.
Five years of drought, five years of warm winters, an infestation of bark beetles, millions of dead trees in the Sierra National Forest, and a forecast high of 110 degrees today in Fresno: all terrifying proof of climate change.
It's as real as the smoke and fire engulfing Fresno County right now.