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In Which Things Heat Up

July 7, 2008 by Mike

Lido del Sole

Route: Giovinazzo - Manfredonia - Pugnochiuso - Lido del Sole

Today would have been about the two bikers I met in Manfredonia from... Norwich. Yes! Well, Old Catton, actually, which is all of 5.8 miles from the house where I grew up. They've just come over on the boat from Croatia, were a little embarrassed when I started to sing On The Ball City, and kindly said nothing when I proceeded the wrong way up a one-way street.

Today should have been about the beauty of the Gargano peninsula - the spur on the boot of Italy, if you glance at a map. It's a National Park, and deserves to be. A beautiful, relaxed, woody, mountainous promontory; a playground of rare animals, unique flora and sweaty tourists. I arrived knowing it could be good -- on my map, the roads show up as wiggly, which is usually a good sign:

Today could have been about finding the friendliest little campsite this evening in Lido del Sole, stopping because I was hot an' sweaty an' beat and, despite this, the little old couple who run the place, bent double and brown as walnuts, smiling and giggling and holding hands like teenagers, couldn't have made me more welcome.

Or the fact that there's a string of small towns -- Giovinazzo (it was Giovinazzo where I stayed last night!), Molfetta, Bisceglie, Trani, Barletta and Margherita di Savoia -- all within 30 miles or so, some quite big, some very small, all with their own cathedral. 'Reward' a town with a cathedral and they're more likely to be loyal to the Church. (Or impose a Bishop, with temporal as well as spiritual powers, and control the whole town that way.)

But I won't even go on about what a strange name Manfredonia is for an Italian town; or the cottages halfway up the hill overlooking the olive trees, the Torre Varcaro and the Gulf of.. you guessed it.. Manfredonia, a couple of miles north of the town, where I hope one day to settle down and raise a family (and some grapes); not even the proud and ancient towers that pepper the coast, standing tall as they guard the coast from Barbary pirates and English men'o'war. And motorcyclists.

Because instead, today has to be about the fire. That is.. the forest fire I helped to put out this afternoon. As you do.

As you do. Which is why I've been sitting at this keyboard for hours trying to decide whether to even mention it. This is forest fire country. People who live here see forest fires every day of the summer, and if, like me, a tourist is one of the first on the scene, well you stop and help.

There are so many fires for two very good reasons:

** it was 43 degrees today -- that's 109.4 degrees in old money, folks.
** organised criminal gangs start fires deliberately, to raise land prices.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when I crested a hill and started to descend in to another fold of the coast road, to see flames ahead. It looked at first as through the road was on fire, but it was the scrub and trees immediately beside the road just as it turned a sharp corner. Everything to the left, heading uphill, was ablaze. Where the flames had found sufficient nourishment -- a tree or bush -- they leapt 10, 12, 20 feet in the air. The smoke fled the scene in thick, grey, guilty spirals.

"What the f--- do I do now?" A reasonable reaction, I'd say. I have a mobile -- but who do I call? Or do I turn back to find someone? Wasn't there a small town a few miles back? A hotel?

Luckily, even as I came to a halt, another vehicle screamed to a halt behind me. Sorry to revert to cliches, but this one *really* screamed.. and so did the driver.

"Now. NOW! Here, start unwinding. Now! Here!" (I didn't need to speak Italian to get this.) The driver was uncoupling a hose from the back of his pick-up truck and already disappearing into the undergrowth to the left hand side of the fire. I barely had time to register surprise that his truck had a fire hose.

He was out of sight. I could still hear him. And the fire. I cranked at a big wheel on the side of the van. The long black hose was spat out as he moved at speed up the hill. Another car stopped. Another face, aghast. More shouts. More pointing. He ran to the far side of the truck. I cranked the wheel. He was grabbing a second hose. I sprinted round to his side. Yes, he signalled. I set to unleashing more hose for him on this side. He dragged the hose to the other side of the fire. He clambered up into the undergrowth. Then I was back to the first wheel.. then the second.. then the first.

The second man reappeared, flushed and panting, within a minute. He gestured to me to take his place. It was all gestures -- even if I could have understood Italian, he had no words in him to say anything. He takes over at the wheel. He also fishes out his mobile phone. "Go! Go!"

Deep breath. Leap up, clamber up from the road to the scorched earth. Get your balance. Up, the hill must be at a 45 degree angle, 10 metres, no more, to where the head of the hose lay. Pick up. A simple trigger mechanism. Deep breath. Aim and fire. Fire? Wrong word. Or maybe the right word. Fire: I zap a small burning branch. It takes longer, more water, than I expect. It occurs to me that the branch must have been stunningly hot. (It occurs to me that I am, too.) Uphill. Then downhill, to unsnag the hose where it's caught on a tree. Back up. Working out how to send a spray or a jet of water. As far as I can see (which is a little further than the flames) the fire is relatively contained. Twenty metres across, maybe 150 metres from the road to the farthest smoke. Eyes in the back of the head. Don't want to get trapped. Thirty metres away, on the other side of this field of fire, the Italian shouts at me. Up! Up! He's pointing uphill. There's a cluster of flame. Great balls of fire. The wind is picking up -- blowing the fire away from me. But we need to get to that hotspot before it takes off again. Between here and there: dead earth, smoking. I pull the hose uphill. I go back down to untangle the hose. I run back uphill.

It's 43 degrees (I discovered later); I'm wearing my thick, black motorbike trousers and boots; running uphill. In the middle of a forest fire. I. Am. Hot.

I can't shank the hose any further uphill. Back downhill to unravel or de-snag or.. oh. The man at the truck has disappeared. So it's all the way back to unwrap the rest of the coiled hose. And to do the same to the other hose. More shouts across the flames. Encouragement, but also 'Hurry up! Get back to the top! Hurry!' Striding and running uphill, half-slipping: hot. Pat my trouser pockets to make sure the bike keys and camera haven't fallen out. (What would the insurance company think of this?) but no time to take snaps. Slip, stride, stumble, sweat. The hose again, and up. A burning tree. Spray the upper branches, jet at the base. It's taking too long to put out each element of the fire. And there's the patches of smoking earth behind and below. Are they about to reignite? Can't: there's nothing left to burn. So why's it smoking? I've pulled my hose as far as it can go. And that's a long way short of the current epicentre, a-ways uphill and with the wind blowing from my back it's heading even further away. I swing sideways to get closer, but I'm still out of range. We both are. Zap a burning log. Spray where it's still smoking. Tidying up but no more than that.

And then.. we run out of water. Both hoses dry up. We're close enough to see each other shrug. Nothing else to do.

And then.. glory be.. here comes the cavalry. Two large jeeps kitted out with firefighting equipment. Four, five, six figures in fluorescent orange dungarees.. now is not the time to criticise their fashion sense, Mike.. and helmets. The other guy is explaining what he knows. I have to sit down

(How hot was I? With the fire still burning high above us, the first thing the firemen (and woman) did was to turn one of the hoses on me.)

We worked out that we'd been fighting the fire for three-quarters of an hour before reinforcements arrived. These first were volunteers. The professionals arrived 20 minutes later. And two lots of police. Or was it three? Enough for two of the groups to have a massive argument, a real barney.. I never did work out what it was about. The jeeps drove straight up that 45 degree hill. Someone called in air support -- three sea-planes that scooped up water out at sea before dropping it -- with extreme precision -- on the fire.

And that was more or less it, for me.

The man with the hoses came to thank me. Michelangelo works at a hotel a few miles away. A guest had seen the fire, driven back and raised the alarm. Michelangelo jumped in the hotel's fire protection truck and raced over. He's called on several times every summer. "Most weeks," he says, looking back at the fire. "It's very hot here, and then there's the criminals..."

The volunteer fire brigade are out every day.

As you do.

Because this is forest fire country. People who live here do see forest fires every day of the summer, and if, like me, a tourist is one of the first on the scene, well you do stop and help. I was lucky -- not the right word, but what is? -- to arrive at the same time as Michelangelo and his firetruck. It was a relatively small fire. Michelangelo will probably forget the details by the autumn. I know I won't.

And it certainly slowed me down on a day when I'd planned to rush through this lovely countryside on the way north to the date I haven't told you much about.

Beside the Seaside

In Which Things Heat Up

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