27th July 2017
In my wonderful tiny country, which is just like a small slice of Spain, there is a huge summer problem.
The fires rip along the country.
I wake up in the morning and look over the neighbourhood from my balcony. There should be clear sky and birds singing, but not this morning.
Everything was dark. The smell of burning wood filled my senses. There has been drought this year. Very little rain and the farmers are worried. The crops, what will happen to the crops? If the farmers don´t get their crop they have no income. What is it that makes every summer like a hellhole with burning fires everywhere.
This year is worse. I have been here 6 years and every one of them we have had terrible fires, but not as many deaths as now.
This photo is from yesterday afternoon.
The fires are about 80 km away from my home but the smoke is here and the smell, the horrible smell.
Why is this like that every year? Why does the government not do something about it? What can be done?
Those questions pop up every year. Now there is a committee, 12 people, trying to figure out something. They will talk until death, but will something wise come out of it? I’m not sure. I hope so, but I am, truth to tell, not optimistic.
This morning I was watching the news and the names of 64 people, that lost their lives just in one day some weeks ago, were read. Family of 4, family of 2, a firefighter and many more. What a tragedy and all because we have trees that somehow catch fire during this time of the year.
I was driving home from Coimbra and saw cigarettes flying from cars ahead of me. How can people be so stupid? Don´t they think about anything but them selves? This makes me furious and the cars had a P number so they were likely people living here. No one should do this, its common sense.
It is not just in Portugal. It is in south Italy and southern France also. The drought is killing everything and those who don´t respect the nature, sometimes, light the fires just by pure ignorance.
This is how it looked from my balcony early this morning, clouds of fire all around. Massive and no crack in it. The smell horrible even inside my apartment.
I hope someone will come up with a solution, not soon but NOW.
Good help those who have lost their homes these last 24 hours. It brakes my heart to see grown men crying on TV and looking at the shell which few hours earlier was their home.
Hulda Björnsdóttir
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