When it came to earthquakes and wildfires, there was always a sense of smug comfort being in this corner of the Midwest. No longer.
The Golden State might be a West Coast utopia, but then Californians live on a fault line that traverses most of it. Wildfires decimate woodland valleys across the state.
That is then followed by mudslides. The cycle has continued year after year.
These were annual occurrences in California, which left us with an air of geographic superiority. As troubadour Warren Zevon sang in 1976 in “Desperadoes Under the Eaves”: “And if California slides into the ocean/Like the mystics and statistics say it will.”
We may have tornadoes, but we normally get plenty of warning they’re on the way. We had none of these environmental disasters Californians seem to suffer each year. We were immune. At least that’s what we thought.
Until a 2.9-magnitude earthquake hit July 10 in the depths of Lake Michigan, nearly 14 miles east of Lake County. No damage was reported from the quake.
No one told me this area could be rife with temblor activity. Or as the Doobie Brothers sang in their 1977 album, “Livin’ on the Fault Line”: “No one can run when it finally comes down/
Nobody knows what is stirrin’ underground.”
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The lakeside quake was the second tremor to hit the Land of Lincoln this year. A 3.8-magnitude quake was reported in central Illinois. Most of us have been aware of the New Madrid Fault in southern Illinois, whose last major quake resulted in the Mississippi River changing its course.
Apparently, we have a lot of seismic activity, the shifting of tectonic plates below the Earth, in the state. Forty-four earthquakes have been registered in Illinois during the past decade, mainly Downstate.
According to the Illinois State Geological Survey at the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana, we average about five earthquakes annually. The largest temblor, magnitude 5.8, was in November 1968, centered in far-Downstate Hamilton County.
That is minor compared to California, which had 3,286 registered in 2025, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the most in the Continental U.S. Alaska has had more earthquakes and has registered the biggest ones in the U.S.
Bringing us further to ground was the hazardous and unhealthy air quality conditions of the past week, bringing wildfire dangers to our doorsteps. Couldn’t even flee to the Northwoods to escape the ecological dangers of the smoke emanating from Canadian and Minnesota forest fires.
Folks broke out leftover COVID-19 masks to combat breathing the haze hanging in the air. The smelly smoke from the fires spreading across 2,528 square miles in the Province of Ontario snuck into Lake County overnight last Wednesday into Thursday.
At the peak, more than 100 million Americans — from the Midwest to the East Coast — were under serious air-quality alerts from the smoke, which wafted into the states from Canada, where thousands of Ontario residents were evacuated.
The wildfire fog was thick enough and the Air Quality Index in the “hazardous and unhealthy” ranges to call for the cancellation of outdoor activities across Lake County over the weekend. An air quality alert remained in effect through Monday night for the region due to when environmental agencies said the smoke should finally clear.
North winds pushed the smoke from some 900 wildfires, including about 120 burning out of control in Canada, south and southeast into northern Illinois. More than a dozen of them bordered the states of Washington, Minnesota, Michigan and Maine.
As expected, health officials warned particulates accompanying the smoke are bad for humans. At the very least, they cause upper respiratory issues; at worst, they can cause respiratory distress for susceptible groups.
Of course, some are pointing fingers, blaming the Canadian wildfires for the environmental distress we’ve suffered the past week. President Donald Trump wants to charge tariffs to Canada because of the hazardous air that has drifted south.
“The United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable,” the president said. He attributed the cause of the fires to a lack of proper forest management in Canada.
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Trump called the pollution “willful negligence,” costing the U.S. billions of dollars. Ironically, Canadian fire crews have helped battle past U.S. wildfires.
We’ve had enough smoke from our own wildfires, in California and other western states, in past years invading the skies over Canada. As a country, we’ve got little room to lecture while forest management and neighborly cooperation remain a two-way street.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor. [email protected]. X @sellenews