The following is a guest opinion from McKinleyville residents Michael Welch and Anne Dawkins.

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This weekend hosts an event at the airport which never should have been permitted in the first place. Some people love it, but do they really understand how disturbing it is for the community near the airport? A more normal air show would be more appropriate, but this event originated from a good ol’ boys kind of influence over policy makers that is hard to counter.

What’s wrong with it (from our perspective, and living 1.5 miles due east of the airport)? We don’t decry the normal use of the airport – commercial air transportation is crucial to the community.

First, it glorifies war. We’re so appreciative of what our vets and civilians did and sacrificed for the world in stopping the Nazis and imperialist Japan. Michael is proud that his dad was a belly gunner in one of those bombers that flew many missions in the European theatre and Anne is proud of her father who was a fighter pilot in the Pacific theatre. But those days of necessary war are many decades in the past, and our nation now needs to end its own imperialism and war-making, and be much more cognizant of the need for peace.

The event burns huge amounts of fossil fuel, thus belching tons of CO2 and contributing to human-caused climate change at a high rate, and contributing to other environmental problems – strictly for non-artistic entertainment. And this year, they’ll even have a fire-breathing, jet-powered 1950s Chevy truck spewing pollution.

We worry for the critters. The explosions scare the heck out of pets and the forest critters (and many human critters, too). If you’re an animal lover too, this event should make you as upset as we are.

The explosions and over-flights also trigger PTSD in folks, like for many combat vets and other victims of violence. This alone should be enough reason to not hold the event.

The dozens of noisy, low-altitude overflights by large prop-driven and jet-propelled war machines are quite disturbing. Likewise the high-performance cars that drive back and forth on the runways (yes, they’re even noisy way over here). The flyovers even bother areas as far east as Blue Lake, which we can attest to as we were there on the Saturday of the first year the event was held.

Our Humboldt County tax dollars help subsidize this event. And we wonder who paid for the many firefighters and fire engines both at the event and at this week’s prescribed burn at the airport. Taxpayers? What are the fees to the airport and government that the organizers are required to pay, are they enough to cover the costs to the community and government? They certainly don’t help us neighbors out in any way.

We have lots of reasons to hate it, but the smoke from this year’s prescribed burn just added to them – we literally could not see the trees across the creek gully from our home – just a couple hundred yards away. We had to stay indoors to stop the burning eyes and throats. The air quality control board let this happen based on old info from the Eureka weather service (at least that is what their air quality specialist let slip when we called to complain). They did not properly do their job.

Even more bothersome than the rubber-stamped approvals from the air quality control board, as soon as the fire fighters saw that air movement was practically nil that morning, they should have disallowed the burn right then and there. Did they even bother looking at the still air sock right in the middle of the airport before torching the field? We did. There was not enough breeze to clear the air properly, so the smoke wafted right up our little watershed and hung there for hours.

Don’t get us wrong, we’re not against prescribed burning. It is an important wildfire prevention tool and valuable for keeping our lands and forests in good shape, but it’s not appropriate for merely facilitating human entertainment. They could have just mowed the grass and weeds – just like the rest of us must do; and just like they will do for the rest of the airport’s fields. Hell, the organizers were so “special” that they could just burn the area, while the rest of us are under burn permit suspension.

Enough of our rant – just know that we absolutely hate this event for good reasons, as do hundreds of other people who live in the vicinity of the airport and beyond.

Michael Welch and Anne Dawkins
McKinleyville