Burning in Pandemic

For a few years now, I’ve been obsessed with air quality. Well, not like “obsessed obsessed,” but aware, and somehow I ended up being a weirdo who can fit all her belongings into her little car, including 4 full-sized air purifiers and 1 small one for my car.

And it’s a good thing, too, because Oregon is burning down.

The Beachie Creek Fire sounds like the title of a Hardy Boys mystery, but overnight, it grew from 490 acres to 130,000. People went to bed with smoke in the distance and woke up to find their homes on fire. The news reports that officials expect mass casualties.

My parents’ house, where I’ve been since March, is between two fires. Here’s a map: https://imgur.com/a/uZz8iWY

We’re between Albany and Corvallis (for scale, Salem (top of the map) and Eugene (bottom) are are 66 miles apart) The Beachie Creek fire is about 35 miles away, but people 14 miles away are on level 1 evacuations.

When I was in Thailand, I remember the air quality index being 127 in Chiang Mai. I wore a mask there, and still, it felt like I had a cold. Runny nose, sneezing, sore throat. There were fields burning, I remember hearing, and the streets were congested and hazy with exhaust fumes.

That feels so long ago now, and I guess it must have been three or four years ago, but the air right now is 459, and my air purifiers are on high 24/7, but my grandma has one, and my ex-boyfriend has one, which means I only have two and the car purifier, but even indoors with them running and the windows closed and never going outside, my throat burns and my eyes sting, and when I woke up this morning, I learned that my dad had worn a P100 respirator mask (blocks out everything) and taken the dog for a 45-minute long walk/run/playtime outside in the burning air, and I just kept thinking, oh my god what is wrong with you.

My parents say we’re fine here, there’s no fire risk. But my mom also told me that the house is made of a good coat of fire-resistant something, so it won’t burn down, but I’ve seen the videos of people driving through the town of Lyons, and everything is smoldering and gone. They say we’re fine, and probably we are, but they also weren’t concerned about the pandemic, and so I check the air quality periodically for spikes that could indicate the wind is blowing this way, and I check the evacuation maps a few times a day, because, apparently, you’re only notified by phone alert once you’ve hit level 2.

But what I think about more is how traumatic this year has already been, and I’ve been personally unscathed by covid—I only know one person who has tested positive—and the fires are currently just a nuisance. But I could barely function today. I can see the stress in my face, the way I’ve aged five years in as many months. And all I can think is how the virus has hit so many people and about all the little white trash, poor, poor, poor rural communities that the fires have destroyed, and how poor people don’t have home or renters insurance. One-tenth of the entire state’s population has been evacuated, and people have fled to the makeshift shelters at the fairground, their cars full of all their belongings, faces unmasked and not distanced, with no way to escape the horrific air. And now, I keep thinking, they’re going to catch covid-19, and then what?

Last updated September 13, 2020