Fires and Altitude?

If you live presently at sea level like I do going to visit elevations over 3000 feet can be a problem if there are fires and smoke going on. 

What I have found is if fires start when I'm at altitude (above 3000 feet) that I need to move to a lower altitude so that I can breathe safely through the night at age 77.

So, even though I lived through many many fires in the summers in the 1980s when I lived in Mt. Shasta my body was acclimatized to living at that altitude. Your body over the course of a few days to a week completely changes how it operates in order to function better at altitude.

However, since I have been 65 or 70 I notice altitude is more of a problem if there are fires. So, if you are over 60 or 65 be very careful if a fire starts where you are if you aren't used to living at that altitude for more than a week or so.

My wife and I went to Lake Tahoe in the early 2000s in our Motor home and stayed at Granlibakken which is a Swiss chalet type of place to stay with our daughter. Well,  a fire had started next to the hotel and she wanted me to unload our baggage and I told her there was too much smoke to unload anything and carry it up three flights of stairs because I have lived at altitude where fires and smoke were happening before this so I knew not to exert myself especially at 6500 feet where Lake Tahoe is.

So, she wouldn't listen to me and got smoke inhalation when she decided to unload our motorhome into the Chalet up three flights of stairs. then our daughter who was maybe 7? then told a fireman that her mother couldn't breathe which was true. The fireman put her on oxygen and called an ambulance so my wife had to spend the night in a hospital in Truckee.

This is why when there is smoke at especially Lake Tahoe or someplace this high of an altitude you cannot exert yourself without winding up in the hospital with smoke inhalation maybe for a night like my wife did then.