Everyone, turn your fan on?!? Spokane group aims to blow wildfire smoke back to Canada

SPOKANE, Wash. (KOMO) - What to do when thick smoke from Canadian wildfires is choking your town with hazardous air quality?

Lead a city-wide effort to blow it all back where it came from?

A group on Facebook is trying to use the power of social media to convince the entire city of Spokane to turn on several fans and shoo it away.

"There are roughly 550,000 residents of the Spokane, Washington metropolitan area... To get rid of this smoke, we have to work together as a community," according to the Facebook event titled "Blow Spokane's Smoke Away to Canada." They figure if all 550,000 residents put at least five box fans on their roofs on Friday at noon, it'll push the smoke away.

"After much deliberation and mathematical calculation, we have figured that it is absolutely possible for us to blow this smoke away with high powered fans," the site organizers wrote. "This Friday, every resident must place at least 5 box fans on their roof. Turn your fans on to the highest setting, and aim them toward northeastern Canada. Team work makes the dream work. Let’s do this, Spokanites. Let’s send this smoke right back to those Canucks!"

A noble effort, indeed!

Sure, the mathematical calculations probably didn't account for finding roughly 2.5 million box fans (does Amazon carry that many?) or the electrical power that would be required to run all of them in tandem. But as they said: "Team work makes the dream work," eh?

Still, Spokane may not need to tax the power grid or personally cause a nationwide shortage on box fans to send the smoke back to Canada, as Mother Nature might do it for them. Current forecast projections show a cleansing west wind to blow into Eastern Washington Friday, which is predicted to significantly improve the air quality.

But even if the fan plan doesn't pan out, the group is hoping its post will do some good, providing a link to help Canadian shelter animals who have been displaced by the hundreds of wildfires burning in British Columbia.