California Station Fire

 

As a kid living in Southern California meant that hearing about wildfire was a common occurrence.  Even then I had more interaction with wildfires then most solely due to my uncle working for the Angeles National Forest.  He is the reason I have such an interest in Natural Resources in the first place.  I remember a period when California had a fire going on while I was in middle school that would later be known as the station fire.  Now the station fire was the biggest was the biggest wildfire to hit that year and I remember it also being one of the first major fires my Uncle had to work on.  This fire went on for over a month and my uncle was constantly working during that time near the fire as it was going on. During that time whenever I would talk to him I would ask him questions about the fire which then developed into questions about wildfire in general. He would tell me how all wildfires will stop growing once it runs out of fuel because that is its limiting factor.  This makes sense to me now as once a wildfire is raging the heat and oxygen is not an issue.  

As the station fire raged on it started to get in the way of daily life.  The air around my town slowly became more and more smoke filled and escalated from PE not happening during school anymore to there being no school entirely.  I remember before classes were canceled and during the breaks it being hard to breath.  I used to walk to school everyday with a couple of my friends and at one point we all had to walk with face masks on in order to not inhale a ton of smoke during that walk.  That went on for about 2 weeks before the wildfire was contained and the air cleared up.  The fire ended up burning down 209 buildings and over 160 thousand acres.