Today we luckily came back from our weekly visit to the big city early in the afternoon. On the way back, we saw quite a few bush fires and discussed idly that they are said to be spontaneous combustion, and whether we really believed it or not.
We were eating our quite belated lunch outside when we noticed an unusual amount of smoke almost everywhere around the house. In the distance, but everywhere. We decided to keep an eye on it and see how it would develop. Our area is a very windy one so we were well founded to be feeling a bit uneasy.
At some point, after feeling more and more uneasy to hear the fire crackle around, I got up from the table and took my camera to go and have a look but it was progressing too fast and I had to run back at some point. Spraying was not really an option: we only have one hose, and the water pressure is not extraordinary. There was no way we could soak all our plot or even enough of it to stop the fire.
We decided to wait to see whether it'd reach our neighbour's property before calling some labourers in the village to help us fight it. But then, once the fire was at our neighbour's, it was too late to call for any help that would show up soon enough. We moved the cars to the other side of the road (with the dogs inside, with apologies to my RSPA friends: better have dogs in a car than in a burning house. I left the windows open, though, so I guess my bush dogs were not too very hot by their own standards), then looked for ways to stop the progression. Two adults, one 3-year old child, and fire. And wind. Lots of both.
We ended up (don't laugh!) beating the burning fringes with a local broom, and it worked! It was an awful lot of work: you have to find out where to beat, and work FAST, without fanning the flames.
Believe it or not, we were able to stop the several fronts coming towards our house and tried to stop others going to a plywood structure built by a poor guy who was not around, but after some time we had to choose between going back to our side of the fire where it had rekindled in several places, and fighting on the guy's side (he was not around) what looked a desperate fight, because the fire was quite fierce there.
So we went back to our side of the fun, and kept beating the bush. Literally. After more than an hour of what looked like demented and futile efforts, the fronts that were threatening our house were almost snuffed out. I'm not sure about the plywood structure, and the neighbour suffered some loss of building materials (but the building doesn't seem to have been affected).
