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– We’ve been driving for just over two hours. We follow an app that tells us what the air quality is, and it’s very bad, Vegard MacNeill Sætre tells NRK.
Vegard and Keeley MacNeill Sætre drive from Oregon to Yellowstone National Park. They talk about poor visibility, constant smell of smoke and ash in the car.
According to the couple, what should have been a fantastic sight has been reduced to about 200 meters of visibility on the road.
Keeley is working on a research project in Yellowstone National Park.
For this reason, the couple has traveled from Albany in the state of Oregon, where wildfires have raged for a long time. The couple have driven around 12 hours many times before. They see a difference in the landscape. That is, they see a difference in what they see through the smoke.
Vegard says that the masks that Americans must wear outdoors due to the coronavirus quickly get dirty with airborne ashes.
2 centimeters of ash in the car
– These blue masks look like surgeons’, it takes half an hour before they get sooty, says Vegard.
– Five days ago we woke up and then I had little more than 2 centimeters of ash in the car.
Almost a hundred fires are breaking out on the west coast of the United States. Strong gusts of wind spread and set several deadly wildfires alive.
In Oregon alone, where Vegard and Keeley live, half a million people have been evacuated.
360,000 hectares have been burned in recent days. Vegard tells of entire small towns that have been engulfed in flames.
Reuters describes the city of Molalla, about 40 kilometers[25 millas]Portland, like “a ghost town full of ashes.” The 9,000 inhabitants were evacuated.
28 people have lost their lives and many are missing after fires in Washington states, Oregon and California, CNN reported Sunday.
Worried about the homeless
– You can no longer stay indefinitely in one area, he says, and tells the smell of smoke that floats in the air, even inside houses.
– The early days, air purification systems managed to keep up, but now only HEPA filters in the car can keep it odorless inside the car, says Vegard.
They also wear masks inside the car due to poor air quality.
Dramatic fire scenes outside the car window.
Dramatic fire scenes outside the car window.
Reuters
Vegard and Keeley consider themselves lucky. For now, Albany residents should not evacuate. And if they have to leave home, they have relatives in South Dakota who can house them.
The couple is more concerned about each other. There are many homeless people on the west coast of the United States.
In January 2019, the U.S. Interagency Council on the Homeless estimated that 15,876 people were homeless in Oregon. In neighboring California, the number is 151,278.
– We are safe, we are. But it’s strange with that, the west coast of the United States attracts a lot of people who are homeless and who don’t have that much.
According to Sætre, mild winters mean you don’t need a house, but you can sleep outside in tents in large forest areas. At the same time, he emphasizes that those who live in tents are having a harder time now.
– There are quite a few people who potentially have a big problem, says Vegard.
Smoke from wildfires shades the sun and turns it brown during the day.
Smoke from wildfires shades the sun and turns it brown during the day.
Reuters
