PUTTING OUT A FIRE. August 2021. Ibiza.

Happy after a hard day at work and success!

This past week we had quite a few calls and fires to put out.

Now is the high season of tourists visiting our island and it´s packed with people everywhere.

Tourism also attracts many people who also want to make money and come to work or sell things in markets and so on. The thing is that the housing is sky high now and everyone is trying to rent out rooms and homes to gain more and we have a serious housing problem.
As far as looking after our environment, people camping and living in unregulated conditions in the woods is a great fire risk and we have had to put out several fires related to tents living in the woods and people who either spoke or cook in these places.

A few days later this is what it looks like in the day time. So lucky we got there before it was out of hand.

Overall I must be recognise that the majority of people living in tents or caravans are quite aware, if they werent´t we would have had a lot more work this summer.

Anyway, last Thursday we had a call at 14:30h that some woods were on fire next to the road up on the north part of the island. My Brigade is composed by 6 people and one truck driver with whom we work as a team.Then we also work with another 4 workers who arrive in the helicopter and then the helicopter will fly up with the red Bambi and keep refreshing the flames with it´s charges from a nearby pool or agricultural water deposit.
This fire is thought to have started from a cigarette end, possibly thrown out of a car window as this had it´s origin by the road.

That´s me recruiting the hoses.

As you can imagine, during the time we are fighting the fire it isn´t possible to take pictures, but our local news paper had a reporter come and do pictures that are free to download from Diario de Ibiza so I´m sharing some images from ZOWY VOETEN https://www.diariodeibiza.es/pitiuses-balears/2021/08/20/alerta-incendio-forestal-ibiza-56375886.html

We were lucky to have the support from the blue Firefighters (the.ones who work on urban and chemical fires also) and together we put it out in two hours. Then we spent 4 hours more putting out all the hotspots to make sure it doesn´t pick up again in the night time.
So we were happy after an intense day to feel it didn´t turn into many square meters of forest.

Best wishes to you all from Ibiza,
Romanie

www.romanie.net
Happy to be on my day off now painting in the studio! :-)