Major disappointment for our family last weekend. And ours was only one family’s story about the impact of the King Fire in northern California. Recent rain has helped the 7000+ people who were assigned to this fire to finally gain the upper hand. Over 7000 firefighters and other personnel, almost 100,000 acres. When there were “only” 4000 people assigned to the fire the news reported the cost of $5 million/day. Fortunately there were relatively few homes lost compared to other recent fires (but if you were one of those few its obviously a major impact), but the destruction to the forest, the wildlife, and the impact on thousands of peoples’ lives is impossible to quantify.

I realize that natural disasters happen all over the world and the impacts are far worse than what happened here, but nevertheless this is the one that is right in our faces with a direct affect. And this one was not NATURAL. There was an ARSONIST. I can’t even express my anger and frustration over that.

My son and DIL both live just south of this fire and fortunately the initial work by the fire crews prevented the fire from burning south where potentially hundreds of homes, including theirs, could have been burned. They both worked this fire (son on the fire line and DIL in dispatch) and while they were doing that my other son and the rest of the family headed to Lake Tahoe for the Tahoe Ironman.

I took lots of photos but as the outcome of the weekend was not as hoped I’ll show only three. Saturday the air was clear at Lake Tahoe and we dropped off bikes and bags at the transition areas.  Our Ironmen are Chris, on the right, and Rob, his uncle, second from the left. This was only part of the support crew as the other family members came later than day.  We left at 4:30 a.m. so we could park and get our competitors to the where they needed to be on Sunday morning. Here we are about 15 minutes before the start. The event was cancelled (or at least the public was told about it) at the absolute last minute as the first wave of contenders were entering the water. The bike/run portion of the race was to take place in the Squaw Valley/Truckee area. This is a view of Squaw Valley as we picked bags up later in the day. Although there had been some rain, that is not mist hiding the mountains. It is smoke.

Major disappointment for everyone at the event. Frustration. Tears. Anger.  There is no arguing about the fact that conditions were not safe for an elite (or any) athletic event, but that doesn’t help with the frustration of everyone involved….This is only one event. I can only imagine all the ripple effects of this incident caused by ONE PERSON. It seems tame to call him selfish, but what else? Right now we don’t know anything about the reason behind the arson. But there is no good reason.  Daylight drive back home.

So now I will MOVE ON. Next post will be all smiles!