Wildfire on the Mountain
When crisis struck, I learned what matters to me
Monday…
It was a helluva night, and the morning after, my brain was fuzzy and full of fur.
It was hot as hell here in Valencia Province, Spain, in August of 2018. Routinely in the 40s (100+ degrees to those of you on Fahrenheit) by mid-afternoon. The previous day had been no exception, with not a breath of a breeze, the local vegetation crisp with heat. I was making Bovril ice lollies for the dogs.
So, languishing with cold beer and the air-con, we started hearing the sounds of helicopters and small aircraft overhead.
I live in the mountains, with a long view down to the sea from the top of the garden. It’s not good flying territory and consequently, the only times we see aircraft lower than 30,000 feet is when there is fire in the area.
We took a look out from the balcony, but there wasn’t very much to see. The main impression was of the overwhelming heaviness to the air that left me predicting a thunderstorm.
Later on, when the day had cooled enough to venture out, about 8:00 in the evening, we headed for the beach. ‘We’ being me, my partner, Jim, and our vacationing house guest, Graham. As we piled into the car, looking up and between the pines that surround my house, I saw the mother of all thunderheads building up above us.
Jeez….
Is the beach a good idea?
But as we drove along, watching the monster above us, it roiled and churned like no thundercloud I’ve ever seen, reminding me of nothing more than movies of erupting volcanoes.
Clear of the pine forest, it became clear that what we were seeing was a column of smoke. Rising from behind the ridge of the mountain it was boiling up into the sky, some of the smoke drifting low, but most was punching skywards.
It looked seriously scary and impressive as hell.
“Perhaps we go no further than the village?” suggested Jim.
“Agreed.” In my head I was assembling a list of evacuation necessities.
In the village, the bar is positioned at the head of a street, facing square-on to the mountain. It gave us a ringside view of what was happening. The smoke column was powering up into the sky, and at the head of the column, it spread into the classic anvil shape of the thunderhead, with the occasional flash of lightning illuminating it from within.
As we sat to drink, tables and pavements were scattered with ash, and from where we were sitting, self-interest at heart, the question was Which way is it heading?
Behind the ridge and obviously several miles away, the fire was no immediate risk. But the mountain plateau grows a covering of Mediterranean scrub. Our house is nestled in pine forests. Rich in resins and oils, our inflammable landscape, were it to catch light in the prevailing weather conditions, would explode into fire.
Will we have to evacuate?
I’d never been in anything like this position. The biggest home crisis I’d ever experienced before was a washing machine flooding my ground floor. Cause for rubber boots, a plumber and an emergency hunt for my house insurance documents. Trivial by comparison.
Graham checked on his phone, finding news reports of the fire near the tiny village, Pinet, which sits high on the mountain plateau in the back-end-of-beyond. It has only a hundred or so inhabitants and the access roads are precipitous. In a spirit of exploration, Jim and I once took a drive up one of those tracks, when we first moved to Spain, and I swore I would never venture there in a car again. As I looked over the edge of the thousand-foot drop to one side of me from the scarred and broken track, it scared the living s**t out of me. Certainly, getting fire engines up there isn’t a possibility.
By now, the only emergency services capable of reaching the plateau were out. The small yellow spotter planes, with their task of reporting where the fire was, were buzzing above. And helicopters, their huge water bags swinging below, travelled in a steady stream between the plateau and the sea.
The smoke column was growing by the moment, ever more powerful and more impressive, vortices of smoke corkscrewing thousands of feet up. However, from the murmurings around us, both Spanish and English, we picked up that the Spanish authorities were not particularly worried.
Over the next hour or so, it became clear that the great blessing for the night was the complete lack of any wind. The base of the smoke column drifted gradually away from us, but it was the natural movement of a fire that is simply consuming what is adjacent, not that of a fire being fed by the wind and carried to who-knows-where.
Over half an hour or so, the column gradually lost its power. The churning subsided and it was clear that the heat engine at the base was dying away. It felt as though everything was back under control.
But then as dusk fell, the mountain became silhouetted in a red glow. It was like some eerie view of the netherworld, perhaps the first sight of Mordor by Sam and Frodo. As smoke drifted and moved, the glow diffused, then stabbed through the clouds. Glimmered, then breached the curtain like a search light. No flames were visible, but this otherworldly light was unsettling to say the least.
It was too dark now for the planes and choppers to fly, so any fire-watch would be carried out from nearby mountaintops.
Ash began to drift down again and the news came through that the Spanish authorities were evacuating some areas. Not our own, but on the other side of the valley, in an urbanisation of several hundred people, the order was out to leave due to the threat of smoke inhalation.
Ticking at the back of my head, my assembled list of ‘the essentials’ grew:
- Me
- Jim
- Graham
- One eight-stone mastiff, Honey
- One podenco, Eddie
- One canine toothbrush, Rosie
- One adult cat, Bonnie (current whereabouts unknown)
- One Chimera kitten, Harley (liable to be snack for Eddie)
- Laptop
- Back-up drive (complete with house insurance documents)
- Passport/Spanish ID card/bank cards/cash
And all to be fitted into a Peugeot 107…
By now it was 1:00 in the morning and many of the ‘evacuees’ had simply settled at the bar, some accompanied by their dogs. It was looking as though the bar owner was going to have a profitable but very long night.
However, I am a lark, not an owl and I needed sleep. As we headed back for home and left behind the glare of the streetlights, the true scale of the glow on the mountain became clear.
Dante had about the right idea.
Back home we corralled all the dogs and cats into the house, got leads and bottled water at the ready, and I put bag, briefcase and car keys in one spot. Meanwhile, Jim parked the car outside the gate — no need to reverse out of the drive should it be needed.
And in fact, it wasn’t needed. We slept peacefully and the following morning the sound of aircraft and chopper engines came early; scouting the area and delivering loads of water for damping down.
The news came that the fire moved to a new area but was being contained, and all our precautions were unnecessary.
But it is at a time like this that makes you realise what is important to you.
