Friday, August 12, 2011
Burn Baby Burn
This time of year it is really dry in the central parts of Brazil, around Brasilia. That means wildfires are rather common. It is a natural part of the cerrado ecosystem and hence no one seems to care that much about it. It often seems they start spontanously and as it seems most of the time they also die by themselves after a while. From Brasilia you often see smoke rising towards the sky in the distance and flying back from João Pessoa to Brasilia on Sunday evening I saw quite a few fires on the cerrado, one quite big one and many smaller, some even very close to the city or even in the city. This is something that is very unusual to me; that you can have fires going on within the city and no one cares! No fire brigade is there to put the fire out! Sometimes there is a normal car from the Bombeiros, not a fire truck looking at the fire, but not putting it out.
For example there has been a fire along one of the main roads very close to where I live for a couple of days. I saw it first yesterday and then it was quite small. Today I passed again and then it was much bigger, and even though I passed several times during the day I did not see anyone trying to put it out. Ok, obviously it is still ok, it hasn't spread to any buildings, but you can not take that for granted!
Last week there were some buildings that burned, among them one of the more populare restaurants here. Everyone said it is the place to go for seafood, but I never had the opportunity to go there. We had planned a visit there with a delegation in August, but now we will have to make other plans. A colleague was eating lunch there when the fire started and had to leave. And another colleague passed by the same efternoon while it was still burning, but not even then he saw a firetruck.
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