{"id":12027,"date":"2016-11-12T15:45:02","date_gmt":"2016-11-12T20:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dougbittinger.com\/thoughts\/?p=12027"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:38","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:38","slug":"smoke-on-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/smoke-on-mountain\/","title":{"rendered":"Smoke on the Mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/PineyMountainFoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Smoke-in-the-sky-red-light-161113.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-12028 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/PineyMountainFoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Smoke-in-the-sky-red-light-161113-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"red light at mid day beacsue of smoke\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" \/><\/a>The sunlight slanting in through the window is casting the red beams of a gorgeous sunset on the floor &#8212; except it&#8217;s 1:00 in the afternoon.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/PineyMountainFoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Smoke-in-the-Sky_Orange-Sun-161113.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-12039\" src=\"https:\/\/PineyMountainFoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Smoke-in-the-Sky_Orange-Sun-161113-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"smoke in teh sky - orange sun at mid day\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" \/><\/a>The sun is a deep orange ball high in the sky that appears only slightly brighter than a full moon. The online weather station says our skies are clear and sunny, no cloud cover.\u00a0 What we see up there is all smoke.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/PineyMountainFoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Aircraft_firefigher-Tanker-dropping-retardant.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-12030\" src=\"https:\/\/PineyMountainFoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Aircraft_firefigher-Tanker-dropping-retardant-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"aeriel tanker dropping load\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" \/><\/a>And we&#8217;re not even all that close to the fires in our area. We went out for a drive after church this morning. It gets much worse up in Del Rio. I feel for the people who live there: dealing with heavy smoke, some being forced to evacuate due to approaching flames and the dumping of flame retardant by aerial tankers.<\/p>\n<p>Emergency Management says they&#8217;re getting a handle on the situation. I applaud these brave men and women fighting a fierce fire in rugged terrain. A fire fueled by 50 years of dead, dry brush and debris.\u00a0 It&#8217;s been that long since this mountain burned.<\/p>\n<p>This tanker (looks like a C130 to me) was flying over our house most of the day yesterday. <iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vJ0F0ON2V6I\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/PineyMountainFoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Helicopter_Firefighting-twin-rotor.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-12031 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/PineyMountainFoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Helicopter_Firefighting-twin-rotor-224x300.jpg\" alt=\"fire fighter helicopter\" width=\"224\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a>There are several helicopters being used as well.\u00a0 One, a twin rotor model (Chinook?), spooked a friend of mine pretty badly.\u00a0 She was driving along the road that runs beside the French Broad river in Del Rio (Hwy 25\/70) and thought the chopper was going to land on her roof as it dropped in to scoop up water from the river in a big bucket.\u00a0 It was so LOUD!<\/p>\n<p>The fire nearest us is across the French Broad river (and the highway) from us, so it is not going to get here.\u00a0 The smoke makes it unpleasant to be outside, but not as bad as it could be, and is elsewhere.\u00a0 We are blessed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The sunlight slanting in through the window is casting the red beams of a gorgeous sunset on the floor &mdash; except it&rsquo;s 1:00 in the afternoon. The sun is a deep orange ball high in the sky that appears only slightly brighter than a full moon. The online weather station says our skies are clear &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/smoke-on-mountain\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Smoke on the Mountain&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-12027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-mountain-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12027"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20555,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12027\/revisions\/20555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}