Final draft preparation

As per Ben's reminder I decided I might do an update on the progress of my story.

Yesterday I spent a good deal of time tracking down some additional sources, and some I hadn't been able to contact when I did my first round of interviews prior to completing my rough draft.

Yesterday I spoke to two different gentlemen who lost houses in the Flannigan Creek Fire in 2003 on Moscow Mountain. The first was a forestry professor at the University of Idaho and was very helpful, I also talked to his adult son briefly who was there during the fire and I plan on calling him again this afternoon for a more extensive interview. The family of the first source rebuilt on the same property. The other source was his neighbor who was out of town when his house burned. He and his wife moved and created an all concrete and steel house. I think it is an interesting contrast, the way the two chose to handle life after the fire.

I also spoke Steven Running, a forestry professor at the University of Montana who is Nobel Laureate for his work on climate change models used in the movie "An Inconvenient Truth."
He provided me with some good information and further confirmation that climate change is currently effecting forest fires and will continue to do so according to climate change models.

Tomorrow I plan on speaking with a researcher at the University of Washington's Climate Impacts Group. I don't expect to learn anything new but I think I expect I will further confirm the information I already have and hopefully pin down some real numbers about climate change predictions in the Northwest.

My plans to visit the site of a wildfire fell through. I see little point in making the trip if I am unable to get someone with knowledge of the fire and burnsite recovery to go there with me. Until yesterday I was still planning to visit the site but I think the story of the two families who lost their houses in a fire is much more compelling and has a greater value to my story.