In the summer of 2009 my daughter Ellie and her friend Jackie visited our cabin on the Nelchina River. They took a sauna in the evening. When Ellie exited the sauna she noticed a smell which reminded her of distant forest fires she had smelled in the past. She investigated but didn't find anything. She and Jackie returned to the cabin and eventually went to sleep.
Her surmise was logical. That summer was a dry one. There had been several forest fires in interior Alaska. Unfortunately, the smell was not from distant fire; it was from a smolder in the sod roof, a smolder which grew. . . . and grew. . . . . . . and GREW. At 2 the fire ignited the propane bottle on the sauna porch and a Hollywood blast shook the forest and nearby cabin, awakening Ellie. Photons from the fireball passed through the cabin windows, reflected off the cabin's walls and landed on Ellie's retinas.
She did not panic.
The rest of this story is told in pictures. Ellie and Jackie spent that night and most of the next day putting out outlier fires and digging a trench to the mineral earth. Late the next evening, they finished their job, saving the cabin and forest.
Oh nooooooooooooooooo!
ReplyDeletecool that they documented it. I like these girls already!
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