On Thursday September 24 at around 10:30 AM, some UH Manoa students looked out their dorm windows and saw a small brushfire.

No one knew the extent that this would affect some UH Manoa students, including myself. Fire trucks were racing to the scene to stop the flames. The flames grew to other parts of the Manoa Valley. Around 30 minutes later, the smoke reached Dole Street and into the dorms of some students. The Gateway House, one of the dorms at UH Manoa, even had to evacuate for a bit because of the smoke.

Your browser does not support the video tag. Kittana Wagener

As someone from Georgia, a place not really known for fires, this was eye-opening to see this first hand.

This affected me physically because of the amount of smoke in the air. Because of this, I had to leave campus for the day in order to relieve myself from the smoke. It also wasn't smart of me to wear contacts that day either, as my eyes were becoming dry and itchy.

Kittana Wagener

This comes to question of are we actually taking climate change seriously?

With many UH Manoa students seeing first hand of what it looks like to be relatively close to a brushfire, it emphasizes how we need to take care of the environment before it's too late. In NYC, there is a "climate change clock" counting down Earth's climate change deadline. In other words, we only have less than a decade to improve how we treat the environment, before the consequences will be irreversible.