A recent study found that a month of medium-to-heavy wildfire smoke - what much of California experienced over the last few years - increases the risk of preterm birth by 20 percent. (I should say this exercise is not for everyone.
For those of us committed to sticking it out, our relationship task is making peace with smoke. Yet the rains turn the burn scars into mud slides and allow the next season’s flora, what the foresters call fuel, to grow.īillboards beckon us to Miami.
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Where we are now - January, the fresh and less fire-alarming time of year - should be the moment for us to relax and reassess what we’re doing in California and how to live here well. All thoughts, all phenomena, existed relative to fire. Even a wet winter (if we caught a break from the drought) offered little reprieve. The dry spring was bad the dry summer, worse the dry fall, unbearable. Wildfire was a constant, with us everywhere, every day, all year long, like tinnitus or regret. Living in California now meant accepting that fire was no longer an episodic hazard, like earthquakes. We were in the midst of the worst wildfire season in the state’s history, and the evident wrongness traumatized us and shook us awake. 9, 2020, was proof that our beloved was corrupted and had been for some time. The dominant story in California these days is that the orange, dystopian smoke-filled sky that blanketed the state on Sept. We propped a bright red surfboard against the living-room wall.
Why live anywhere else? My human spouse hung photos of El Capitan in the entrance hall. We stowed an earthquake kit in the basement of our tiny house and, even prepandemic, cached boxes of N95 masks under the sink. In return, we’d spend a stupid amount of money on housing and tolerate a few hazards. The implicit bargain was that California would protect and deliver to her residents the earth’s own splendor. This was not just our relationship to California this was everyone here. But she was gorgeous, and she brought into our lives, through the natural world, all the treasure and magic we’d need. But really, we already had a bonus partner: California.
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Last week, President Biden approved a disaster declaration for five counties in New Mexico that have been affected by wildfires: Colfax, Lincoln, San Miguel, Valencia and Mora.To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.Įarly in my two-writer marriage, my husband and I joked that we should add a silent third spouse who worked in venture capital or practiced corporate law. The move will allow people enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid to receive some treatments without meeting certain requirements. secretary of health and human services, declared a public health emergency for New Mexico on Monday. The authorities are investigating how the Calf Canyon fire started, but the Hermits Peak fire was ignited in a prescribed burn, which is a forest management tool intended to clear out the undergrowth that can fuel volatile wildfires.īecause of the fires, Xavier Becerra, the U.S. The Calf Canyon and Hermits Peak fires started separately last month, but by April 22 they had merged. The Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak fire is the second largest on record in New Mexico, after a fire that burned through more than 297,000 acres in 2012, and it has eclipsed the total acreage lost to fires in the state in 2021. Recent research has suggested that the heat and dryness associated with global warming are major reasons for the increase in bigger and stronger fires. Wildfires are increasing in size and intensity in the Western United States, and wildfire seasons are growing longer. Temperatures in the state’s mountain valleys, for example, were in the low to mid-80s on Monday, about 15 degrees above normal, he said. Todd Shoemake, a meteorologist with the Weather Service in Albuquerque, said much of northern and central New Mexico was about 5 to 10 degrees warmer than is typical for this time of year.
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