Well, it’s been a week since the #santarosafires started. A short, but long week. Most of the fires are yellow on the maps, but there’s a new fire that started as 2 separate fires this weekend, I think. It’s a ways away but we have been seeing weird smoke over Taylor Mountain – it’s from a few hills back. Hopefully the fires die back and those thousands of firefighters can go home. I heard today that it’s thought that some 50,000 people 100,000 people were evacuated because of these fires. And so many lost their homes. I wonder if parts of the previously-forested hillsides that were burned will somehow end up with housing on them. Extra housing was already desperately needed. I heard on the radio that some folks are not planning on rebuilding… It might take a while to sell those properties off.

We finally got our hands on a P100 gas mask (respirator) today.  I still have been having pain in my chest and headaches. I’m probably a bit more sensitive because I have a bit of asthma and multiple chemical sensitivity. Z can feel it, too, though. Unfortunately, we only bought one (to see if it would fit me- I had had my doubts, and it’s not great with my glasses, but we have it), and there weren’t any in a kids’ size. We finally bought a room air filter for the house, and the plastic smell of it is horrible! Z tried using it after he’d had the window open, and he found that it cleaned up the burnt smell right away, so that’s good.

I am starting to wonder if we should be eating the produce from the garden. There was so much oily stuff in the water I soaked the basil in today. Sure, basil has oils. And the kale water had oils, too, but I initially put the basil into the same bucket. Ashes definitely come off into the water. There were farmers markets today – we went to the Sebastopol Market. It was sad to say goodbye to one couple and to not see my friend’s farm whose stand my family shops at every week. They were evacuated early on Saturday and probably haven’t been let back in. I’ve heard of farms that were destroyed, including another farm from the Saturday market :(. So sad.