The way it should be

This is what an October afternoon in the Mid-Ohio Valley is supposed to look like,

maples and assorted companions doing their ridiculously-gorgeous thing, resulting in some quite-satisfying scatterings on the grass.

 

Unfortunately, this was the view that many hundreds (thousands?) of people in our valley had on Saturday, October 21, when a former industrial plant used to store plastic waste caught fire.

photo courtesy of Margie Zazycki Orcutt

 This horrifying image was shot from a friend's house, several miles from the fire site. The smoke billowed for days as new hot spots burst into flame. Schools, the courthouse, and some businesses were closed for days, waiting for the fire to burn itself out and for the air to more or less clear. Agencies from two states and a volunteer citizen-science program set up air-quality monitors amid concerns over what might be in the air, since the owners of the warehouse claimed not to have complete records of what was stored in the complex. The health department urged people to keep themselves and their pets indoors as much as possible. Many people left the area for the duration. We still have no good information on what may have gotten into area streams.

Surely we can do better than this.