A few days ago, there was a fire near the Salt Lake in Larnaca. We saw smoke from our house, and heard sirens. I gather an arrest has been made, and that it was most likely bored teenagers; however it's also been said that it was possibly deliberate, in the hope of destroying mosquitoes. The latter seems rather unlikely, but perhaps we'll never know.
I took my camera when I walked with Sheila a couple of days later. I'd seen a few photos of the fire itself, and the various vehicles that arrived to assist in putting it out. But I wasn't really prepared for the extent of the damage:
Just a couple of days earlier this area had been mostly green, overgrown after the extensive winter rains. Some of the grasses were beginning to turn brown as Summer approaches, so they were ripe for burning out of control once a fire was started.
While ash is a good fertiliser, and weeds will no doubt grow even faster next winter, some trees are unlikely to spring back into life. This one, surrounded by white ash, looks almost like something out of a stark winter scene, not the end of May in Cyprus:
There was one place - on the other side of the trail itself - where there was still something smoking. We watched for a while, wondering if it was dangerous. Sheila said that, the day before, there were several such smouldering piles but the fire fighters were keeping an eye on them. That didn't stop one of them bursting into flame later on, but we thought this one was probably safe enough:
One of the reports said that an area of around two hectares was destroyed by this fire. Hectares sound to me like imperial units, but apparently a hectare is 10,000 square metres; two hectares, in units that might be more familiar to some, is around five acres.
Thankfully there was still plenty of beauty in the rest of the shrubbery and wild flowers by the trail:
I took my camera when I walked with Sheila a couple of days later. I'd seen a few photos of the fire itself, and the various vehicles that arrived to assist in putting it out. But I wasn't really prepared for the extent of the damage:
Just a couple of days earlier this area had been mostly green, overgrown after the extensive winter rains. Some of the grasses were beginning to turn brown as Summer approaches, so they were ripe for burning out of control once a fire was started.
While ash is a good fertiliser, and weeds will no doubt grow even faster next winter, some trees are unlikely to spring back into life. This one, surrounded by white ash, looks almost like something out of a stark winter scene, not the end of May in Cyprus:
There was one place - on the other side of the trail itself - where there was still something smoking. We watched for a while, wondering if it was dangerous. Sheila said that, the day before, there were several such smouldering piles but the fire fighters were keeping an eye on them. That didn't stop one of them bursting into flame later on, but we thought this one was probably safe enough:
One of the reports said that an area of around two hectares was destroyed by this fire. Hectares sound to me like imperial units, but apparently a hectare is 10,000 square metres; two hectares, in units that might be more familiar to some, is around five acres.
Thankfully there was still plenty of beauty in the rest of the shrubbery and wild flowers by the trail:
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