May 19, 2020
One of my earliest memories is of being upset at my parents because they didn’t wake me when a neighbour’s garage caught fire in the night. I’d heard of fires, even though I was perhaps four years old, but never seen one. Finally, one happened four doors down, and I missed it. I was not happy.
Just eight years ago, we had a very bad spring fire season here in Amatlan, and there were discussions about evacuating along with the dogs. It never got that serious, though people with asthma found it hard to breathe with the smoke coming down from fires on the cliffs above the village.
I confess, I enjoyed the drama, even if I was glad no homes were destroyed. Fires remain one of my guilty pleasures. They’re dramatic, and (as my friends and I had discussed) possibly life-threatening. They certainly break up the monotony of a semi-quarantined life.
Our weather from February through to late April was unusually hot and dry this year, and I was expecting the spring fires to be really bad again. But we had a week or so of intermittent nocturnal rains in early May, and it looked like we’d dodge the problem this time. However, the rains stopped, and the past ten days have, again, been hot and dry.
Today’s fire belching smoke., seen from about half a mile away.
Apparently the state of Morelos has had other fires, but I saw my first local one this afternoon, driving with a friend to take a walk in a favourite area. The flames had broken out high in the hills where no-one could climb easily (the rock is often very friable), and huge clouds of smoke were rising up out of a canyon. I slowed down, nearly hit a motorcyclist, and after getting back where I should have been on the road, enjoyed the view for a few moments. I couldn’t take a photo till later, when only smoke could be seen, but the fire was clearly covering a fair bit of real estate.
We read these days that fires are a necessary part of good forest management. The problem, of course, is that people like to build homes up in the hills, surrounded by trees. Houses and forests prone to fires are a bad combination. I read online this evening that fifteen homes in the area of the blaze had been evacuated as a precaution.
I confess that the element of risk is what entices me about big fires. I don’t do truly stupid things around them (even if that motorcyclist might demur), but a couple of years, I tried to get as close to them as was reasonable without risking being caught by a sudden flare-up. Teams of volunteer firefighters go up to deal with the flames, beating them out or possibly creating fire-breaks, so I stayed a measured distance behind them.
The night-time imagery, which is almost impossible to capture with my camera, is the best. You can see the orange glow of flames behind a crest or a big rock, then a tree catches light and goes up like a torch. The effect can be very Hieronymus Bosch. It’s a reminder how dangerous nature can be, if a pandemic doesn’t do that for you.
The fires above our village in 2012, photographed at night.
The smell of smoke here, two or three miles from the blaze, isn’t bad tonight. But now I have to wonder if it will be beaten out or water-bombed by tomorrow, or whether it will perhaps move closer in our direction. And, of course, whether other fires will occur, closer to here.
Like I said, it’s a guilty pleasure, and I don’t wish ill-will to my neighbours. On the other hand, if nature starts it, I’m always ready to appreciate it.
Provided, naturally, that it doesn’t come that close to my house.
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