| The Waldo fires haven’t only affected the
city of Waldo. The students at the Summer Journalism Institute felt the
effects as well.
On the first day of the Institute the students walked out of the lecture hall to the sight of smoke all through the campus. “I choked,” Curtis Smith said. A great deal of the students thought that there was a huge fire somewhere on campus. Little did they know that the fires in a little town about 20 minutes away were the cause of their confusion. So where’s Waldo? The town of Waldo is 15 miles northeast of Gainesville. Most students have never heard of Waldo. “Waldo? I have no clue where that’s at,” Smith said. Some people were a little confused about the name. “Waldo? Gee I don’t know where he’s at,” Carlene Brown said. “Look for the red hat.” She wasn’t the only one who had that belief among SJI students. Some students had a problem with the smell of the smoke. “It’s disgusting,” Raquel Cruz said. The smell of smoke on some days was so strong that people complained of the scent of it in their hair. The smell of smoke was the least of some people worries. “ I have asthma,” Erin Bryce said, “ So the smoke worried me. One day I was even out of breath, but I tried to stay inside most of the time.” Gainesville firefighters said the cause of all the smoke is a layer of warm air over a layer of cold air prevents the smoke from rising and dissipating. Hopefully with some good rainstorms Gainesville will be ridden of this awful smoke. |