I'm blowing soot out of my nose [View all]

[TrogL]

I'm a bomb baby. I grew up across the river from the North Tonawanda Air Reserve Base. I've been reliably informed they had nuclear weapons there. I watched US TV from Buffalo NY because they had the good cartoons but they would often have air raid practice drills with the infamous bee-doop alarm.

I was listening to it all day yesterday. The local government has chosen it for its emergency tone for cell phone alerts.

I live in Edmonton in Central Alberta, Canada. Yesterday they had to evacuate near Entwhistle, Evansberg, Leduc and finally near Sherwood Park. I'm surrounded by fires. A couple of years ago I was in the Slave Lake fire that destroyed half the city. I was driving between burning trees, past destroyed businesses dodging abandoned vehicles. I had to go to the hospital because the fire retardant damaged my corneas.

I drive around handing out parking tickets. Yesterday I was watching the smoke a couple of kilometres away and was doing sort of OK until I tried to turn off the highway to go home and there was a fire in my way. That's when I lost it. I drove home through smoke sometimes like mid-heavy fog, coughing and choking.

I did get home yesterday and got calmed down talking on my Zoom AA meeting and sat and watched some TV. Then I had a nosebleed. My sinuses were so dry they spontaneously just let go. I eventually got to sleep and woke up and had to blow my nose. Dried blood mixed with soot.

I was at church last Sunday and an authoritarian made the point that Alberta has often had bad forest fires so this is "normal". I used to work for the Alberta Forest Service. Those fires were in late Summer. This is May.

This is not normal.