Maro arde

Sunday was a very sad, ( and frightening) day for Maro. As the title of this Blog post says Maro arde, which means -Maro burns, and burn it did. It was a beautiful hot sunny day, but with a wild , wild wind, that rushed through our road and whipped along the coast .

A friend I messaged to tell her the awful news, came back to me with a very true quote:

Fire is a good servant, but a bad master.

A fire ( that started as a bonfire) in the campo, down in a ravine, so virtually impossible to get to by the fire engines, soon got completely out of hand. It was started by an elderly man who was beyond crazy to light anything in the weather that day. I am not writing about the whys and wherefores, but it was quite incredible how quickly it spread, and by 11am, there were fire engines, police, the Guardia and half the village were out, looking on in horror as their plots of land were shrouded in smoke, huge flames licking the trees and sheds on the farmland.

I had several messages from concerned friends from Frigiliana, Nerja, and as far away as Velez Malaga, who could see the smoke.

It spread along the lower parts of the campo nearest the sea, then past the Marquesas house, down to the beach, and then in an awful twist-and we saw this as we drove back along the coast from lunch at 4pm-it started heading up the mountain, taking in its wake-swathes of avocado trees, cars, farm buildings, poly tunnels and even 150 kayaks stored near the beach. Devastation.

The skill of the helicopter pilots was amazing, as they swooped down to the sea to scoop up water to extinguish the flames. The village was full of acrid smoke ,( burning plastic), and it was dangerously near several houses.

We went to bed that night, still seeing large tracts of land on fire in the mountains behind our house, and woke to more helicopters quelling the flames with water. Thank goodness that nobody was injured, but the loss of land and livelihood was shocking.

Once it was all out, the terrible task of surveying the damage began.

A sad day for Maro indeed.