Fire, Smoke and Injury ~ “Smoke gets in our Skies”

 

Our usual New Mexico bright blue skies have been hazy and grey this past week. I have been suffering from a dry, scratchy throat, watery itchy eyes, and have been feeling very tired and out of breath. I could smell smoke in the air and knew that New Mexico has been dealing with wildfires all over the state, but I just figured my symptoms were allergy or sinus related.

Nope.

New Mexico’s air quality is seriously suffering right now due to wildfires in eastern Arizona.

This is just a powerful reminder that what happens to our neighbors in other states, and even in other countries, may seem far away and apart from our own daily lives, but we should always remember that we are all affected by their experiences and tragedies in some way and at some time.

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“A wildfire burning in eastern Arizona near the town of Alpine has grown to over 140,000 acres. There are reportedly 1,089 personnel on scene at the Wallow Fire as of Saturday morning. The Eastern Arizona Incident Management Team said Saturday morning the perimeter of the fire is near Nutrioso and Mongollon rim.

Areas that have been evacuated include Alpine, Nutrioso, Hannagan Meadow Lodge, Sprucedale Guest Ranch, Brentwood Church Camp, Hannagan campground, KP campground, West Fork Black River campground, and East Fork Black River campground, according to the Incident website.

The Apache National Forest has been temporarily closed due to extreme fire conditions. As of 1 p.m. Friday, the fire was at the edge of Alpine. A Verizon tower and radio repeater were damaged, along with a utility trailer and outbuilding in Alpine.

Officials said the fire has cost $3 million to fight so far. The fire remains zero-percent contained as of Saturday morning. The U.S. Forest Service said Friday that four summer rental cabins burned in the Wallow wildfire, which was consuming dead and dry trees and brush in the White Mountains near the New Mexico border.

Smoke from the fire that started nearly a week ago is being carried all the way to Albuquerque, New Mexico, some 200 miles away.

The U.S. Forest Service says the Wallow Fire is the third largest wildfire in state history. The biggest, the Rodeo-Chediski, burned 469,000 acres in 2002 and the Cave Creek complex fire burned 248,000 acres in 2005.

The Wallow fire just surpassed the Willow fire, which burned 120,000 acres in 2004. This fire is over 15 miles long and 5 miles wide and only 10 miles from Luna, New Mexico. And wind speeds were still 40 mph as of midnight last night.

(Volunteers are handling phones at the White Mountain Joint Information Center. Anyone looking for information should call 928-333-3412)

You can watch the News Video with this link:

Arizona Fires

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Of course New Mexico is very concerned about the smoke that is blowing our way:

The following updated message is transmitted at the request of the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, the New Mexico Department of Health, as well as the city of Albuquerque’s Air Quality Division.

The Wallow fire near Alpine, Arizona grew significantly on Thursday June 2nd, producing an extensive and far reaching plume of smoke across western and northern New Mexico. The smoke locally dense in areas, reached as far east as the Rio Grande Valley in Albuquerque, over 200 miles away(!!!) .

Over the past couple of days the fire has grown to over 140 thousand acres. Persistent southwest winds of 30-45 mph has aided in the transport of an
extensive smoke plume from Arizona across much of central and western New Mexico.

The pattern over the past couple of days has been for smoke to disperse during the day due to mixing of the lower atmosphere followed by a more dense smoke that takes shape beneath a boundary layer inversion that typically sets up at night. The inversion has been more pronounced within the Rio Grande Valley where smoke gets trapped in the valley causing visibilities to drop below two miles at times. Winds aloft will be more southerly during the day which will keep dense smoke and poor visibilities over Grants and points north and then shifting to the southwest or west later today and tonight which may shift the smoke plume back into the Albuquerque and Santa Fe areas.

(I took this photo on Sunday while out with Val of Fantastyk Voyage participating in the East Mountain Fiber Farm Tour. Notice how hazy and ‘flat with low visibility, our normally bright blue New Mexico Skies are)

Those with respiratory illnesses or issues should avoid using their swamp coolers and should stay indoors.  Estimates of the air quality can be determined using the visibility. If smoke reduces visibility to 3 to 5 miles, the air quality is unhealthy for sensitive people. Visibilities of less than two and one half miles are associated with unhealthy conditions for all.

I checked our New Mexico Environmental Air Quality Website for our current air quality and discovered ours was in the Unhealthy Range, which warns “People with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should avoid prolonged or heavy exertion. Everyone else should reduce prolonged or heavy exertion.”

(By the way everyone can check the current air quality for their own state on this website AIRNow.)

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Well, perhaps I should have abstained from my prolonged and heavy exertion on Friday and I wouldn’t have gotten injured. I was trimming limbs off our juniper trees and at one point was cutting a smaller branch which was located in an awkward area to reach, when the saw bounced off and sliced into my finger, not once, not twice, but three times. Ouch!!!

I immediately went into the house for a towel and to rinse it off and I felt sick when noticed how deep and wide the saw had cut my index finger. The layer of skin in the center of the two cuts was loose and at one point, lifted up and stuck to my finger on my opposite hand as I washed the wounds out. Eeeek!

(WARNING!!!!! GRAPHIC PHOTOS BELOW!!!)

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Thankfully the cut on the top of thumb was very minor, but it still hurt. I held my index finger in a towel for about 30 minutes, applying firm pressure, both to make sure the cuts had stopped bleeding and also because I just wasn’t ready to deal with looking at the gaping wounds yet. I probably should have went in and had a few stitches, but wasn’t up for needles and a lengthy emergency room visit.  And I also wasn’t sure they could even stitch them up because of that thin sliver of loose skin in between the two cuts.

So, instead I just dressed the wounds myself and found a popsicle stick in my craft supplies to use as a splint because the wounds are right beside a joint and will never heal if I bend that knuckle.

It’s not pretty, but it works well to keep my finger immobile, which is especially helpful because, whenever I bend that finger it feels like it’s ripping apart….Very painful!

And that’s not all. I also got a blister on my right thumb. I popped it last night, but it’s pretty sore, too.

And having an unusable index finger sure makes it slow and difficult to type on the keyboard. Thank goodness for spell-check or my words would be impossible to figure out.

Well, I was planning on working on my vegetable garden over the weekend. I was hoping to set up the water irrigation system and finally do some planting, but with the lung-irritating smoke from the Arizona wildfires, the 30-40 mph wind gusts, the dust and sand storms, the terrible drought, and now my wounded finger, the chips we’re stacked against me for doing any work outside.

Whatever happened to Spring? And when will our beautiful summer days arrive? What if this crazy abnormal weather is all we get this year?