Suzanne Radford
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SATURDAY EVENING – still fighting fires on our site – WITH OFFICIAL HELP!
From: Peter Weaver
Sent: Sunday 12 August 2018 09:40
Subject: Saturday Evening -Very Impressed - Army Mobile Smoke Detectors In Action!
Good morning all
I alert you to what appears to be a very good system in operation in remote areas such as ours, during a large fire.
Small sections of the Portuguese Army ( our visitors were fresh from North of Porto having arrived the day before (on Friday), probably from the 19th Infantry Regiment – at least the insignia on their vehicle was ) and were touring the back roads in 3 tonne trucks looking for smoke or other trouble!
Their Senior NCO buzzed our gate bell yesterday (Saturday) evening having seen smoke wisps rising from rocks at the edge of pine trees near the gates. They asked me to open the gates so they could tackle the source.
The Portuguese Army (Team of 5 in a truck) arrives – at last some help to extinguish a persistent slow-burn fire under some rocks.
They stayed for over an hour damping down and trying to find the source of the smoke using specialised rakes and shovels. They had two back packs for water and water lances for extinguishing minor fires (like the personal crop sprayer kit one can buy) and for damping-down which they filled with water from – our fish tank.
The Army team filling their back-packs with water from the fish tank
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They were a cheery team who seemed to enjoy being appreciated! In the end, try as they might, they could not extinguish the slow-burning pine-debris that had built up around and under the tightly spaced rocks and so their SNCO called in the Bombeiros who came and flooded the area to ensure that the slow-burn was well and truly out.
An excellent facility, very welcome to see it in action.
No fish were harmed during this operation – they made sure of that - not wanting to clog their spray lances!!
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For the debrief and taking the Firewise™ ideas forward we really could have done with something like that team based in our area to cover say the Picota- Bemposta clutch of 35 houses ( less 5 which are destroyed or no longer habitable) – even on a self-help basis using our own manpower. Much of the work my neighbour and I were dealing with after the initial firestorm was trying to extinguish slow-burning leaf-mould fires and the odd tree stump – not needing a full Bombeiros team but the energetic use of rakes, shovels, a pump and hose reel and, essentially, a good supply of water close to the site. Do not most rural homes have static water tanks = cisternas on site?
I had tried putting out that area (under pine trees by our entrance gates) previously but clearly had not used enough buckets of water to saturate it. As each bucket had to be carried up from the fish tank one quickly ran out of energy having been doing this work over the past 6 days. Aside: anyone wishing to lose 4Kg should try it sometime – mental note - must include a set of braces for trousers in my emergency kit to avoid being done for indecent exposure – my waist measurement has reduced dramatically!
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