A week ago today I got my first experience with what they call a veld (feld) fire. I had told the guys here at the farm that if they needed any help with the fires just to call me. That Sunday night we held a braai at the main house, and a storm blew up very sudden. That another thing about this place, all the rains seem to occur moments after a blue sky. It has caught me 3 times now with my laundry drying out on the line. Anyway, this particular storm was about 2 hours of lightning and about 5 minutes of rain. The rainy season is just starting here in South Africa, so they had about 3 millimeters of water before that. This causes quite a problem with fires on the mountains from the lightning strikes.
The night of the braai they had a small fire to attend to, but it took maybe 30 minutes to mobilize and put it out. What we didn't know was that lightning had struck just on the other side of one of the mountains near the reserve. We noticed it the next day.
Around 2 that Monday, we had decided to mobilize and watch this fire as it peaked the mountaintop. The flames were huge, but they seemed to dissipate when the broke the ridge top. We waited hours for it to come down the mountain, because it is too dangerous to fight the fires on such steep terrain. My friend Martin took me up a trail road on the side of the mountain that leads to an old man's property on the peak. The fire had been up near his house, and taken out his water tanks and some of his outbuildings. We had offered to come and help him, but he did not want Englishmen and Blacks on his farm, so he sent us away. He allowed Martin to come and help, because he is Afrikaans. When I rode back up with Martin, I asked if there would be a problem that I was with him. Martin said "I am going to tell him you are deaf and dumb, so you must keep quiet." We didn't get all the way back to the man's farm, but we found out the next day that he had survived and fought the fire away from his house with two 5 gallon buckets. This guy is at least 70 years old and lives alone. I did get to see his front gate. He has a statue of President Krueger (the old Boers President during the Boer/English war) at the gate, as well as many signs that say he does not allow Blacks, English, or women. I'm told he has a botanical garden and a museum, and that it's basically a small town on the mountaintop, just for himself.
But now I digress. We watched the fire on the mountaintop for about 4 hours, and decided that it would probably make its way down the other side, where the foundation also has property. A few men were charged with keeping an eye on the fire while the rest went back for dinner, or to finish what they needed to. I went back and had dinner, and got another call about 7:30 over the radio asking for all available firefighters. I radioed in and asked if they needed my help, and was told which fireteam I needed to get with. I jumped in with the foreman's father, who had a single cab truck with a firefighter unit in the back. This is basically a 150 gallon tank with a long fire hose. When we made the turn down from the house I noticed that the sky was completely a blaze orange color. The fire had come down the mountain and took off through the tall dried grass. Hundreds of acres of land were ablaze, and the first notion that came to my mind was "this must be what hell looks like." Now I have seen many fires in my lifetime. Acres of burning wheat, houses, even small forest fires. But this was unlike anything I had ever seen.
We pulled up with the rest of the team, and Dennis and I were charged with keeping the fire on one side of the road from traveling to the other, where our houses happened to be. We pulled up to the start of the fire, uncoiled the hose, and I was to keep the grass at the edge of the road soaked in water so it would not burn. We soaked every bit of about 2 kilometers of road, but it seemed the fire was burning so hot that it dried many places out, so then we had to go back and spray the fires out by hand. I had put fires out before, but never this magnitude. You basically have to wade off into the brush and water the fires out. But it is important to have a man back on your line, because one rogue cinder from the fire in front of you can start another fire behind you. We also had to soak the burning trees down, because they were more likely to blow cinders across the road.
We got the fire put out there after about 2 hours, and the crew decided that we needed to backburn the other side of the mountain, where the rest of the farm and houses were. This basically entailed starting our own fire at the base of the mountain, so that when the veld fire came down, it would have nothing left to burn. We were at the back of the fire line making sure that none of our fire got out of hand and crossed the road again. After about 4 hours we had finished, and all that remained to worry about was a small fire behind the hacienda (main house) that we could not burn in front of. Three men were charged, at 2 in the morning, to put on backpack sprayers and climb that part of the mountain and put the small fire out. I wondered as they began to climb if I would be able to do such a thing in the pitch black. Even thinking about it now I am still not sure. In about an hour they had the small fire out. It was definetely an experience I will remember for a long time.
This particular fire I do not have picture during, I only have some of the aftermath, which I will try and post today.
The next fire that I went to was two days later. We got a distress call from farmers that lived beneath a long mountain range that was completely on fire, burning down the mountain. It was only a matter of time before it got down into their fields and livestock. When we arrived at the fire, there must have been at least 50 people there with 15 to 20 fire trucks. The people here really know how to come together when disaster strikes. Here we started another backburn against the mountain, this one also being several kilometers long. The wind was with our fire, and it seemed to rush up to meet the veld fire midway up the mountain. The fire coming down looked like a volcano erupting. We finished the backburn, and everyone met up and the end, where the farm owners were thanking everyone and offering to braai as soon as fire season was over. This fire I got several pictures of, and I will try to post some of them as well.
On a lighter note, we also got some wildlife on the reserve in the past week. We had a delivery of 25 zebra, and 59 wildebeasts. One of the zebras got caught in the electric wire the first night, and stayed in it until the next morning. When it was cut out of the wire, it survived for a few days...Long enough to have a colt. Unfortunately the mother died, and without milk the colt was lost shortly after. I couldn't believe that they had survived at all through the first night, but the will to live is stronger than we might think. We are also supposed to be getting impalas soon, with 2 cheetahs following shortly after.
This past saturday night the guys offered to take me with them to Modimolle to watch the rugby championship here in SA. The more I watch the sport of rugby the more I am enjoying it. And being able to get off the farm was a big boost as well. It can seem a bit constricting around here at times when you have no place you can go. It makes it especially tough when the internet goes down, which tends to happen either 3 to 4 times a day, or stays off a whole day at a time. So far the past weekend every time I was supposed to skype with Sam and the boys the internet had gone down. This was mostly because we had a big storm yesterday, which knocked out the power several times. Hopefully I will get an opportunity to speak with them some this week. It really beats me down when I miss their call.
Last night I got treated to an authentic South African dish called poikie. I have to thank Martin and his wife Anita for making that for us. They have basically taken me and the younger guys here on as foster children, it seems. The poikie was good, it reminded me of stew. It was cooked in a type of dutch oven for 3 hours over a low fire. It had squash, beef, mushrooms, carrots, cabbage, and baby corn. There are several more ingredients I'm sure, but those are the ones I could pick out. I also got to try a drink called "Amarula" which is from the amarula fruit from SA mixed with a cream. It reminded me a lot of irish cream.
Well, its time I got off here and got something productive done. I'll post some pictures now before I'm done. Until next week.
No comments:
Post a Comment