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Smoky days brought back memories of 1980

I had nearly forgotten. This summer’s string of smoke-filled skies that resembled fog some mornings and early dusk in the middle of the afternoon, conjured memories of 1980 when we had another summer of a natural disaster with similar consequences.

 

I had nearly forgotten.

This summer’s string of smoke-filled skies that resembled fog some mornings and early dusk in the middle of the afternoon, conjured memories of 1980 when we had another summer of a natural disaster with similar consequences.

How many of you recall or at least read about our infamous Mount St. Helen’s volcano blast?

Those who were around will remember weeks on end when the skies were filled with near-choking dust. The problem then, as it was with this past summer’s fires, was that those with respiratory problems couldn’t really escape to where the air was cleaner, because there was nowhere else to go.

The Mt. St. Helens scenario was brought back to my mind by a couple of environmental experts engaged in a conversation during a national forum that was addressing our man-made and Mother Nature-made impacts on our well-being.

Everyone engaged in the conversation, including the two environmentalists/climatologists agreed that we Canadians were slackers when it came to environmental protection.

The group got into a discussion regarding natural disasters, such as volcanoes and earthquakes and lightning lit forest and prairie fires.

Those who knew the numbers stated how volcanoes annually lay waste to huge tracts of land and no government or environmental agency can insist on mitigation funds or rule changes to make it better, because Ma Nature doesn’t play by our rules when she throws a tantrum.

The land that is laid to waste by volcanoes remains in that state for decades if not centuries.

As one of the speakers noted, that just recently land in Hawaii and Indonesia has been taken out of production and complete towns buried under the lava. .

I know I had conveniently forgotten the Mt. St. Helens summer when the leaves on our trees went from healthy to dead and ash-ridden problems were reported everywhere including air filters in vehicles, animals falling over and children being held inside on warm days. I was going to write that they kept kids in on warm sunny days, but that was the summer when the sun did shine, but we didn’t see it … something like what we witnessed with the drift from our northern forest fires for a week or two, this summer.

We are reminded that in the summer of 1980 and again this year, when the natural world runs askew, the destruction is huge.

When these things happen, our conversations regarding sustainability, economic growth, mining and other man-created issues, pick up in tempo and walk in step with talk about natural disasters.

Of course weather-related disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes and the like are often blamed on mankind since we are believed to be major “weather-changers.”

So when it comes to weather-related disasters, I vacate the argument and listen to the measured discussions from the well-versed and educated and not the doomsayers and Armageddon repeaters.

All I know for sure, is that no matter how well and carefully we direct our lives and the lives of others, we’ll never be able to dodge big disastrous events, since some of the most ruthless examples are Mother Nature’s way of telling us who is really in charge.

If you want to say it’s God, Allah, the Great Manitou, Donald Trump, Don Cherry or Tom Mulcair or some guys in Fort McMurray, who brought the wrath down on us … well, go ahead.

Me? I figure that if we had warm weather dinosaurs in what is now Saskatchewan disappear millions of years ago, the subject is a little bigger than what my feeble cerebellum can comprehend.