Today it’s raining and that’s a real blessing for our part of Italy which has received virtually nothing from the heavens for over a month. The extreme dryness spreading over the land has made the risk of forest fires very real and the greatest conflagration in local living memory broke out over the Pisan Mountain on the 24th of September. It spread rapidly, fuelled by strong winds, and was not finally extinguished until the 28th.
(Photographs courtesy of Tuscany Fire-fighting service)
By that time the appearance of large tracts of the Monte Pisano, which separates Lucca from Pisa, had changed from a deep green autumn colour to a hellish grey desert.
(My photographs)
Over 1400 hectares of forest were destroyed, many houses were devastated out, damage to olive groves hundreds of years old was extensive, both domestic livestock and wild animals were burnt alive. An artist friend living in Pisa noted that the first she knew about any fire was when her and her neighbours’ houses were suddenly invaded by hordes of flying insects fleeing from the mountain fires. This is, indeed, a well-documented phenomenon.
Fortunately there were no human victims but hundreds of people had to be evacuated and many livelihoods destroyed.
It’s a sad fact that the Monte Pisano does suffer from fires at regular intervals. But the last major fire in September 2009, with 120 hectares burnt, hardly compares with the present catastrophe.
One of the families affected by the inferno and one of many having to suffer a ‘notte bianca’, i.e. a ‘white night’ of sleeplessness, was that of our friend Piero Nissim who lives on the route above Calci leading to Buti (still closed because of the wild-fires). Piero is a world-famous writer, poet, playwright, composer, singer-guitarist, master Esperantist, puppeteer and documenter of the Nazi-fascist atrocities perpetrated in the last war, particularly against the Jewish people. (Piero’s mother was from a Lithuanian Jewish family and his father, Giorgio Nissim, was an Italian Schindler-like figure who saved thousands from the death camps and was awarded the Italian gold medal for civilian valour). I have mentioned the multi-faceted Piero in my posts at:
https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/a-plea-for-justice-and-civility-in-italy/
https://longoio.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/pumpkins-and-puppets/
We visited Piero’s family just after the fire – the visit had been organised before the conflagration – and Piero gave us a hair-raising account of the terrible, sleepless night of the 25th when evacuation and the destruction of their exceptionally interesting house with its art works, puppets and books were so perilously close.
(From left to right: Piero’s wife, Claudia, Sandra’s mum Elia, Piero’s daughter Miriam, Sandra, me, Piero Nissim)
Fortunately the flames didn’t reach them although they saw them rising hundreds of feet in the air just a few yards away. What saved them were the mountain stream and the road which separated their house from the main fire.
(Piero’s ‘white night’)
Now with the rains do not believe that things will come back to normal. Without the trees the steep slopes of the Pisan mountain will be subject to landslides and massive earth movements. For this reason, after the fire-fighters, with their Canadair planes and helicopters, the channel excavators have moved in tracing ditches which will hopefully allow the rain water to be diverted into conduits and not further devastate the hills.
The Pisan Mountain, scene of some of my most enjoyable walks, will never be quite the same again. True, the damage could have been far worst for even the splendid Charterhouse of Pisa at Calci with its priceless museum and monastery was threatened.
The fortress at Vicopisano, designed by Brunelleschi and curated by another friend Giovanni Ranieri Fascetti, was also dangerously close to becoming another victim:
(Talking of Vicopisano, there’s going to be a castagnata or chestnut festival there this October 4th in the late afternoon).
Forensic investigations now point to the fire as a deliberate act of vandalism. Why? There’s no reason to set alight a mountain which is a national park and protected from any illegal building.
Yes, these scars will last throughout our own lifetime and only disappear with new generations who, hopefully, will have greater regard for Mother Nature and her irreplaceable wonders.
I was present to witness a similar wild fire near Como last October- and it was late October. teh steep hills opposite Laglio were ablaze for a week, with only constant aerial water bombing to put the blaze out. At the time there were theories about the presence of mafia in the deliberate lighting of these fires. The theory goes that if you cause destruction of a property nearby, you can buy it later at a bargain price.
My view, coming from a land that experiences wild fires often, and having lost my own home in the 2009 bushfires in Victoria, Australia, where over 2000 homes were burnt to the ground and 170 lives were lost, is that Italians have their head in the sand when it comes to climate change.
We are truly sorry to hear you have been a victim of wild fires. We hear about them in other continents but never believe they can really happen on anywhere near the same scale here. Italy is suffering increasingly from climate change, as you say, and frankly the infrastructure is way out of date to cope with it. Furthermore, abandonment of traditional farming practises means that ditches are not cleared, forest undergrowth is not cut, and trees are not pollarded. At least you don’t have earthquakes but that is cold comfort indeed.
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