Amy Miller: “For the past two weeks, my home in southern Oregon has been surrounded by wildfires and choked with smoke. For us, it’s nothing new; people around here know more about evacuation levels, AQIs, and smoke masks than anyone should have to, and many locals are parents of firefighters. One friend recently told me that she doesn’t worry much about her firefighter son dying by fire—it’s rare, statistically—but she constantly worries about how much smoke he breathes in. When a photo of five firefighters sleeping in a yard went viral a few days ago, symbolizing the massive Carr Fire that tore into the city of Redding, California, two hours south of us, I thought of my friend and her son. And then a video of a little girl handing out burritos to firefighters in neighboring Anderson, a staging area for the Carr Fire, also made the rounds of social media. The older I get and the more I see, the more I get choked up by firefighters and first responders. They’re all someone’s kids out there, working their asses off for us. We can never thank them enough.” (web)
