Smoke Covered the Entire Region

When I pulled back the curtains in the bedroom this morning I could see it was smokey. "Oh," I thought, "the wildfires are really affecting air quality today." Then, on the TV news we heard a barge was burning near Bridge View on the Surrey side of the Fraser River. I took a few steps onto the balcony and sure enough, a blaze of old crushed autos and metal was only a kilometer away.



It took the better part of the day for them to extinguish the fire completely. Initially, the fire trucks from Surrey were pretty ineffective. Finally, after a number of hours, a fireboat made it from Vancouver Harbour. I'm surprised there's nothing stationed here next to the Surrey Commerical Docks. I find it appalling that the relevant authorities were so unprepared for this simple situation.