Close Call

3.30 pm, Saturday afternoon.

“Oh gawd – bloody TANAPA.  Here we go again…’

A kilometre to the north, inside Arusha National Park, a plume of dense smoke is curling skywards.  TANAPA (Tanzania National Parks) often carry out controlled burning to manage encroaching bush, and they have a habit of not warning the neighbours first.

For the rest of the afternoon, we watch the fire spread along a broad front as it burns ever closer to our boundary.

Jules: ‘You just watch - it’ll reach us around sunset.’

Sure enough, at dusk, the roar and crackle of burning bush is now loud and close; the billowing smoke is glowing a lurid red, lit from within by the flames.  A group of us ranges along the park boundary, armed with pangas (machetes) and leafy branches for beating the flames out.  There’s a bit of a carnival atmosphere – this won’t be a big deal: there’s a gentle breeze blowing against the fire, helping to slow its advance.  And the fire is impressive as it comes, the leaping flames strangely beautiful in the gathering dark, lighting up the columns of smoke overhead.  I even have time to shoot some video.  A team of park rangers arrives to lend a hand.

When it becomes obvious that the fire will not die out of its own accord, we start back-burning: lighting fires along our firebreak.  These burns are small and easy to control; they burn away from the firebreak, back towards the oncoming fire, consuming all the fuel as they go.  When the two fires meet – pffft, no more fire.  We then work our way along the boundary setting more back burns as we go until the fire goes out of its own accord.  Everyone heads home, chatting and laughing – a good evening’s work.

Sunday, 10:30 a.m.:

‘Uh-oh: see that?’

Smoke again, further to the East: the bit that didn’t burn last night.  Worryingly, there’s a high wind today, gusting and swirling, blowing the fire our way.  We head to the boundary, where a gaggle of our Tanzanian neighbours are monitoring the fire’s approach.

‘Are they mad, setting a fire on a day like this? This wind's a killer.’

‘Remember the last one, when a couple of folk lost their houses?  It was just like today.’

‘Yup, It’s going to be a biggie…’

‘The bad thing about the wind is that the fire jumps...’

Hmm, that sounds worrying.

We head back to the house to get ready: a big drink of water, hats, sunscreen (it’s a scorching day today, pun intended) and getting the cows in.  By the time we get back, the fire has already hit.  It has crossed the firebreak in several places and teams of people are frantically beating out the flames before they can take hold.  Our neighbour Charles is there, wearing a motorbike helmet as insulation, shouting orders; his hay barn has already gone up in smoke.  Another neighbour has lost her wooden cow byre: they let the cows out first, so they’re fine.  Worryingly, these structures were well back from the fire: burning debris is being hurled over the firefighters’ heads, mini firebombs, so we are fighting it on 2 fronts now.

There’s dense choking smoke everywhere, making us cough and our eyes stream.

Soon, the worst of it is under control.  Women are bringing buckets of water to douse smouldering stumps; people are taking it easy… then a cry goes up and everyone grabs an implement and races along the boundary: another fire has taken hold.

We hurry to Mark’s plot.  Again, the fire has jumped the firebreak in several places and people rush to put these new fires out.  A small structure has been burned down, but again there’s no serious damage.

The fire continues making it’s way along the boundary, with teams beating out the flames every time they cross.  The fire takes hold in a densely wooded patch in a valley and the flames leap skyward with a deep roar as they devour the extra fuel.  It’s way too hot now to approach: all we can do is watch helplessly from a distance.

Back burning was very effective last night, in more open terrain and no wind.  But today…?  It might just make things worse...  But things can’t get much worse: trees crowd along both sides of the firebreak, plus there’s a house ahead, right by the boundary: it is brick-built, but the outlying buildings are of wood.  The whole lot could go up… We decide to start bad-burning: the heat is intense, but nothing like the monster that is bearing down on us, just 30 yards away.

There’s a frenzy of activity: men leaping in to beat back the flames, until they’re driven back coughing and spluttering; women carrying buckets of water to the front – luckily, there’s a shallow well close by.  After a half hour of intense work, the worst of the fire passes. The house is safe, although a grass store has partially burnt down.

By now, Jules and I are too tired to continue; we can hardly lift our arms.  It seems as though there are plenty of folk on hand and the fire looks as if it’s under control… then my phone rings.

‘Mzee, a tree is burning, right by the house!’ 

This is terrible news: everyone is here, fighting the fire.  There’s no manpower at home to help with a new fire there.  How the hell did that happen?  The house is way back from the boundary!

When we get there, Nnko has managed to contain it; it’s just smouldering, but a bucket of water soon puts paid to that.  The thing is, this tree is in a patch of forest, about 200m back from the front – and nothing else has been touched.  Somehow, a ball of burning leaves must have been blown all that way and lodged in the branches, igniting a bird’s nest or similar.  So how come it didn’t spread?  I don’t know.  But if it had, we would have been up the proverbial creek: there’s no way we could have got a team there in time.

A very close call.