In 2019, on the 5th of June, something catastrophic happened. It all began on Swan Lake in south central Alaska. It started with a strike of lightning that grounded itself into a tree. The immense burst of heat and energy pounding into the spruce sparked the wood into flames. The strangely dry ground caused the enraged fire to jump from tree to tree, turning them all to ashes in a roar of smoke and heat. According to the many surveys taken after the fire calmed this blaze burned 167,164 acres of land. All the while, trees feebly clung to the dried ground, wishing for the rains to come. Their siblings on the other side of Sterling Highway simply had to watch as the flames grew taller and taller into the sky.
Meanwhile, on that same day, 615 miles west in Seldovia, Alaska children sat in schools while the sun beat through the windows. They didn’t know it, but their day would change as soon as they stepped out of the safe concrete walls. When they walked out of the front doors, they’d realize something had changed. For most it was the air. They had become accustomed to clean air that smelled of spruce and dust that rolled away from the road. This scent was different. Some small noses curled against the scent, arms being pulled up over their noses to hide the smell. It reminded some of death, the warm taste of coal landing on dry tongues. Though it was unseen, these children could smell the ash that hung thick in the air.
The others perhaps took notice of the dark haze on the horizon to the north. A gray fog unlike any they’d seen before stretched its hungry claws across the water. Wide eyes gazed at the sky in silence while breathing in the polluted smokey air in fear. The next day, the children were told they’d have to stay inside to prevent them from breathing too much smoke. The air quality was too low for them to have much exposure. They were confined inside for several days, simply watching the sun crack the earth and evaporate any hope of rain. Older students watched on the news, trees crackling in an aggressive blaze; thinking only of their own homes, wondering if the same fate would come of them.
Over the next few weeks, everyone watched as firefighters hopelessly chased the flames from tree to tree. Their goggles filled with condensation, something the forest wished it could have once again. The sun never seemed to set on their weary backs, each hour like a year in the heat of the flames. Yet, the pain was no worse for them than it was for the animals. Dried and rotting carcasses laid motionless beside once beautiful, green needled trees. The birds were pushed into abandoning their nests as well as newborn chicks. From the skies, the birds got a terrifying sight of the fires.
A dark black cloud of ash rose into the skies. It was ominous and moved with a slow precision through the air. The flames beneath the smoke were far more viscous. They clung to the tree's limbs, suffocating them and turning their bark into soot. Like a virus, the fire spread from bush to bush, leaping at any chance it could to destroy something. The once-green grass dried up and blew away in the wind. The smoke spiraled up and away into the bird’s sight until they could see no more.
Humans still drove up and down the Alaskan highways, seeing the very same sight as the rest of the animals, but feeling safe within their cars--cars that could easily melt away if they neared the flames. Perhaps they were used to destruction. The year before this horrific fire, a large wind storm clocking 60 miles per hour came through a few bayside towns. It came in February, while the chill of winter was fading. The high winds wouldn’t have been much of an issue if it wasn’t for the change in the weather that’d been affecting everyone. Summer that year had been unusually hot, drying the ground and forcing the clouds out of the sky. The cold weather of winter dispersed faster. The snow had been used to freeze the tree’s roots into the ground melted away unusually soon and got replaced by heavy rains and dangerously fast winds.
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The rains in that February were the worst of all. They came down from the sky with such a rage that an onlooker would’ve thought a waterfall was outside their window. People watched from inside their heated homes as the trees teetered back and forth, their high branches skimming the ground. Terror filled their hearts. They wondered what would come of their homes that night. Would they simply be whisked away with the water or trampled by the forest around them? That night the rains flooded the streams turning some low roads close to them into rushing rivers. The water on these roads got up to three feet high at some points. The current was strong, attempting to pull anything it could over and loosen the ground. In Homer it was reported by the Homer news that starting at about 9:45 p.m. Feb. 6 the power line in the McKeon Flats went down, cutting off power to Seldovia, Port Graham and Nanwalek.
The power was fixed in Seldovia and the villages by Thursday but the high winds knocked down so many lines that about 6,000 thousand customers of Homer Electric lost power at some point in the storm. It wasn’t just the power lines that toppled over but the trees as well. Over two-hundred trees fell in those few days of February. The winds ripped them from the ground and turned them onto houses and roads. Several roads were blocked for a while, the civilians unable to get to each tree that was blocking the street fast enough. They helplessly rushed back and forth throughout the towns like mice in a race. After this storm, many places weren’t the same. The trees holding rivers back fell away and the water pooled into lakes. The cliffs by roads were pulled down by trees that leaned over the gravel. The land around them was nearly unrecognizable.
The land around people is changing, there’s no denying that. For the last fifteen years I personally have watched it happen. Large snow falls have become cold rains that upturn trees. Little floods have become torrential downpours washing away the ground and turning the hardened earth to mud. The once excited and energized salmon that swam up strong flowing rivers have now been left to rot in the cold ocean. Alaska’s summers have been too hot to keep the water levels high enough for them to swim upstream to lay their eggs. The longer we as humans choose to ignore our problems the more they’ll grow, and soon our lives as we know it will be uprooted and turned on their heads like the trees around us.
Reference-
https://www.homernews.com/news/high-winds-wreak-havoc-on-homer/