Now we’re seriously getting bored. And uncomfortable, cause it’s like 101 degrees (a new all-time record for Colorado Springs), and we don’t like it. Up at our house, it would be easily 10-15 degrees cooler, and shadier in the trees. Granted at this specific point in time, that would be balanced out with smoke, ash and the fear of imminent death, but everything in life is a trade off.
The daily news conferences are pretty unenlightening for us, since after the first day, the majority of the focus was on those areas of the city that were most directly threatened by the fire, as opposed to our neighborhood, which is out in the county. I can’t really blame the local news organizations for devoting 102% of their attention on the houses in the city that are nearest the conflagration. Still, it would be nice if we got a little more than one mention a day from the briefers. Even one picture from our side of the mountain would be a nice change of pace. Just to let us know, you know, that our house isn’t a smoldering pile of rubble. Or even that it was – bad news I think is still better than no news.
Still the press conferences haven’t been without their own special brand of dark humor. What we quickly came to realize, is that the city and/or county as well as the federal authorities that are managing the response to the fire, are either unable or unwilling to restrict the attendees to the news conferences to accredited members of the media. All kinds of random people have been showing up at the pressers and shouting out questions. Yesterday, the briefing started out with a homeowner who showed up so he could angrily shout out things like “they had no right to prevent him from going back to his home!” This, while flames were shooting up a couple of hundred yards from the affected area in which we were to understand his home stood.
Today’s edition was even crazier. Much, much crazier. When the subject of the current poor weather conditions in the area were discussed (hot, windy, dry), one of our local, well, let’s just call her a loon, for the moment, asked whether or not they had plans to use the weather control satellites. When the spokesperson uncertainly asked, “ummm, weather control satellites?” she told him to consult with Northern Command (which is what NORAD is now called), and they would be able to tell him all about them. The rest of the officials at the conference looked uncertain whether they should start edging away, or get the nets.
So at the end of Day 3, we persevere. And the scanner does also.