Water & Fire
It’s no news that California has been in a severe drought for many years.
I remember when I first visited California over 20 years ago that conserving water was an issue. But I also remember back then, there was some serious rain especially during the winter months. Streets would be flooded because of the weak drain system and houses would fall victim to landslides due to over saturation of the soil.
I haven’t seen rain like that in many years. If we now get more than a couple inches of rain, the news reporters are dressed in serious rain gear and talking about how we're about to get hit by a huge storm. Since the highly anticipated El Nino didn’t really happen at all, we’re literally sitting in the dry. It’s odd to be able to see the ocean every day but knowing that our water resources are diminishing slowly but surely. We take our natural resources often for granted but quite honestly, we will be pretty screwed if this drought continues.
Long showers are a thing from the past and my rain boots are starting to dissolve... Last time I saw rain was up north at the Cajun pass where I saw this beautiful rainbow arching across the freeway. Of course I couldn’t resist to take a snapshot…
Due to the severe drought, wild fires have been raging. With my BFF in town and her two children, we drove up the cost to picturesque Carmel. As we were heading up north, we noticed the sky turning into a funky color, immediately giving away that there's a fire happening nearby. It's always a bit eery and has an apocalypse-kinda-feeling. We didn’t realize that there was a big wildfire going on just north of Big Sur. We couldn’t see the actual fire but we could definitely smell it. It was a sober feeling seeing all these firetrucks lining the streets trying to tackle this huge and wild terrain. At this point the area has only been contained to 25% and the winds are not helping. Let’s hope to have it under control soon before it destroys any more homes and lives. A big THANK YOU to our brave firefighters - you guys rock!
(Click on images for better viewing)
These are pictures taken from previous fires near Los Angeles. The red tone in the atmosphere make it almost looks like I used a red filter to capture these images.
So let's continue to conserve water, enjoy sunsets and try to do a good deed every day! As Smokey would say: only you can prevent forest fires!
Your wanna-be-firefighter Mirjam. Peace out!
