From a friend who lives in Nevada City; posted 7:15 EDT today>
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A week ago, the area near Grass Valley in the Sierra of northern CA began to burn and the air around us at home turned to “extremely harzardous”—-the worst air our Air Quality monitoring person had seen in his lifetime.
So we headed to the Pacific Coast, Santa Cruz, which recently had 3–4 huge fires but they were out.
Santa Cruz is N. of Big Sur where about 300 square miles are burning. By dawn this AM, the air in Santa Cruz was filled with large particles from the Big Sur fire——grey dandruff from the skies. So we took off again.
I am in the SF Bay Area now where it seems breathable today—- at least compared to the other places we’ve been.
Miracle no one was killed—-that I have heard about anyhow. Crews have come from all over the US to help. Feds sent big tankers but they could not see in the smoke to fly. Had to get a Black Hawk heliocopter with night vision capability to drop fire retardant.
A friend who lives on the Yuba River at the edge of the Yuba River Complex fire sends us daily reports. She says the bears and the rattlesnakes are coming out of the woods and are in a very bad mood. She also says the terrain so steep, dozers can’t get in to do their work and firefighters are spraining their ankles on the steep slopes.
It is going to be a long hot smoky summer.
..and don’t plan on going to Big Sur anytime soon. They are trying to save the Tassajara complex. Anyhow, the Pacific Coast Highway is completely closed down.