I see on the news today they are telling people with heart problems and respiratory problems to either stay indoors or leave the area. I remember seeing beautiful homes on the western side of those mountains. Lots of spruce trees and brush so thick you could hardly see the homes. Then when the wife and I were hunting on the New Mexico side, I remember it being dry and few trees, but lots of dry brush. Brush so thick we had a hard time walking through it. Just right for a big fire. This is the area near Socorro, Silver City, and Las Vegas.
We have forest fires burning all around us right now, and no body other than us are talking about them. Yea, we got those big water scooper planes flying over day and night. The smoke has been thick. Some mornings I can hardly see the street from the front door. We had rain for the last two days that has slowed them down considerably. Finally some clear air. But it's mother natures way of renewing life, and constant change. Live with it or become extinct. Down south they talk of fires in hundreds of acres, up here we talk in thousands or millions of acres. Luckily in most fire areas very few people live in the path of the fires.