Pandemic Diary — When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

Tuesday, September 8      Deaths   486  (+4)   Cases  28,355  (+165)

We woke up to an orange glow at sunrise, but that soon changed to a dirty brown. There is ash in the air, some of it clearly visible as ghostly gray flakes drifting in the wind. So now we have two reasons to wear our masks outside. The smoke is coming from the east, they say now, where there are two different fires in the Cascades. 

Here’s the view from out our front door

The scene from the back yard.

It got even smokier here on Oak Avenue in the late afternoon. Our air quality has been designated very unhealthy, one step below hazardous, which tops the scale. The worst fires are on the western slopes of the Cascades, one east of Salem and another east of Eugene. East winds, gusting to 60 to 80 mph are pushing the fires down the mountain slopes toward the valley. Towns in the foothills are being evacuated. We’ve stayed inside. 

In other breaking news, the New York Times–a great publication but a little slow on the uptake–has an article today about how dentists are reporting an epidemic of cracked teeth. The surge in dental stress fractures was first reported, of course, in the Pandemic Diary, by co-editor Eve Chambers on June 19. (We’re not sure how the NYT learned of her report or why it took them so long to follow up.)

Wednesday, September 9      Deaths   494  (+8)   Cases  28,471  (+116)

News reports today say that multiple large fires in Oregon have burned more than 530,000 acres. Fire officials are focused on preserving lives and property; containment of the fires is out of the question. The winds around our house have lessened a little, but it is still very smoky and air quality remains very poor. Our housecleaner came today and we usually get out of the house at least part of the time when she is here. So we went downtown for coffee and scones then had our breakfast in the car. Although the air seems terrible, today must be a little better than yesterday because while we were out we noticed that today we could see the sun–at least we think it’s the sun. (It’s very odd to be able to look at the sun without it hurting your eyes.) The first photo is how it looked from a spot a few miles north of town where the smoke was a little thinner; the second is how it looked in Corvallis. Both images are straight from the camera–no filtering.