As Rural Southern Oregon Burns, Locals' Right-Wing Bullshit Approaches The Density Of The Smoke
Youth pastor Matt Wolff and his wife, Jennifer, followed God’s direction when they settled at the end of a rutted dirt track in the pine forests above this southern Oregon town. And they have prayed plenty in the past two weeks as the plume of smoke that started beyond their neighbor’s A-frame exploded into the largest of the dozens of wildfires burning in the American West, a conflagration that has already consumed 241,000 acres, destroyed at least 75 homes and other types of outbuildings, and has shown no signs of stopping as hot dry winds continue to scour Klamath County.
But the Wolffs and many of their neighbors in a ribbon of conservative towns and backwoods settlements along the southern edge of the Bootleg Fire have chosen to stay home, despite the urging by authorities to evacuate. For these residents, the anxious days since the fire began have been spent under a thick blanket of smoke, watering down yards and watching the wind for signs the flames could turn their way. “We prayed a lot,” Matt Wolff said. “ ‘Lord, just keep it away.’ And so far it stayed that way.”
Oregon’s Bootleg Fire is torching an area larger than NYC. Firefighters are scrambling to contain it. The West has been beset by historic drought and heat waves this year exacerbated by climate change, but among the small towns that have been threatened by the Bootleg Fire — Sprague River, Beatty, Bly — there is little talk of global warming. Instead, residents vent about the federal government’s water policies and forest management. They blame liberal environmentalists for hobbling the logging industry and Mexican marijuana farmers for sucking up the area’s water. “Now the top end of the Forest Service are a bunch of flower children,” said Jim Rahi, 71, who was filling up his 3,600-gallon water tanker to deliver to firefighters in the town of Lakeview, east of the spreading fire. “That’s what the real problem is. It’s not that much hotter. It’s environmentally caused mismanagement.”
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But despite the harm from fires and drought, many in this part of southern Oregon don’t place the blame on a changing climate. About 70 percent of Klamath County voted for former president Donald Trump in the past election, and residents often echo his skepticism on the topic. “Global warming?” Lawrence said as he sat drinking coffee with three friends on Wednesday morning around a table at the back of the Sycan Store in Bly. “Yeah, right,” one of the others muttered. The men chose to stay in their homes throughout the fire, convinced it would not spread across the irrigated fields between them and the burning forest.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/07/17/bootleg-fire-oregon-heat-wave/
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