After last year’s calm, this summer season has again been rife with wildfires, some of them big and close to housing areas. In early September we’ve had our own scare in the neighborhood.
I was just coming back from a walk shortly before noon, when I saw thick clouds of gray-brown smoke coming from our neighborhood. I ran home as fast as I could and saw from a distance that the smoke seemed to be coming from the beginning of our street. I ran into the back garden where Christian was already well underway with the water hose. From behind the neighbors’ house came the loud and terrifying crackling sound of fire – but we couldn’t see where the fire actually was. We were afraid though because our neighbors’ house and garden, which is at the beginning of the street meet our garden in the back, although they are separated by several houses at the front of the street.
So we both ran around the garden, with burning eyes due to in the thick smoke, for what felt like an hour or two – trying to water or at least moisten anything dry in case any sparks were carried our way. The summer had been hot, all the bushes on the bank were dried up, as was all the woodchip mulch on the ground – and there was a strong Tramontane westerly wind blowing. Ideal conditions for the spread of a fire.
Finally we heard several fire engine sirens at the beginning of the street and saw observation planes flew overhead. Later a fire-fighting plane flew overhead and dropped a load of water above and behind our bank.
After a while, the smoke diminished, the loud crackling stopped and the fire seemed to be under control, so I went to have a look. The fire had indeed raged at the beginning of our street, in an overgrown thicket and in the lower garden of our neighbors. The higher trees and bushes seemed okay so far, but all the grass and low shrubs as well as their compost bins were burnt black up to the fence to the next house, where the people were watering their wooden fence and their trees and bushes.
Apparently the fire had started a bit farther out, next to a vineyard, then raced up a slope, across a fallow area full of dry brush and then towards the houses in the upper housing development where it singed a children’s playground in front of the first house. It also went right into the thicket and the neighbors’ garden.
The beautiful large cypress tree at the top of the slope, our beloved eye-catcher from the western windows, went up like a Roman candle and now looks black and charred – we hope it recovers.
It was very scary and we all talked about it for weeks. Luckily no one was injured, there was no real damage to buildings and the extent of the vegetation damage is manageable – but it was still a terrifying experience that we certainly don’t need again. At the end of October our trusted gardener will finally “tidy up” the dead wood on our steep bank…
It remains to be confirmed but apparently the fire was started by the owner of the vineyard, either through the use of petrol-powered machinery or because he wanted to burn vegetation waste there. If it did indeed happen like that, it was an idiotic thing to do in the prevailing weather conditions and as a local one should really know that. In any case, complaints were filed by all the neighbors with actual damage and whoever did it will face serious consequences.
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