Portugal fires

[Prajna]

The remains of my welding rods and flux-core mig wire. I'm most sad about the lovely Esab rods, especially the stainless steel ones, which flow like butter. Fortunately I had been too lazy--actually too occupied with my life's-work project--to take my welding gear out of the van, so my two welders and my tool bag with a selection of rods and perhaps a spare roll of wire and--more importantly to me--my lovely Esab Savage welding helmet. So there's that.

That was my caravan, btw. The welding consumables were in a nice, dry cupboard at the back. Someone here in Portugal, a friend of a friend, has just bought me a new caravan and it should be on site next week. Sorry I've been pretty preoccupied for a while now on something beyond my wildest dreams, so I've not been posting here for a while.

 

[Martin Hocking]

Oh gosh that’s terrible. Sorry to see that’s happened.

I accidentally set fire to a load of dry grass at work earlier this year and it had really started to gather some pace by the time I realised. Getting on top of it was a very stressful five or ten minutes as it was just about touching a load of pallets with more burnables on it. And it took an alarming amount of water after that to cool it all down afterwards.

So just the idea of a wildfire like that is enough to give me the jitters. I really hope the caravan was the only casualty and there isn’t any risk of anymore coming. Best of luck with your wildest dreams and beyond.

 

[Blobber]

Fires not good
Good luck with the new project and keep us posted

 

[Prajna]

Everyone here is safe and all the animals too. We lost four caravans on our land, both my tool sheds with all the tools but one strimmer, two scaffolding towers, a pair of Lidl trestles and a Parkside portable bandsaw. And, my day-to-day welding gear. We watched the fire approach along the other side of the mountain range but it swung around the end of it and hit us rather more quickly than we expected.

 

[jmp49]

That really sucks, but glad to hear your all ok.
We had some grass fires local that destroyed a few hectares after some incidents with petrol strimmers and lawnmowers and farm implements that caught fire, but fortunately nowhere near as bad as further south in the Albi region of France or Portugal or Spain etc. Still sobering to drive past black fields and burnt out houses here and there and think about how that could have been us.

Also frustrating because we were put on restrictions because of elevated fire risk, yet certain people just carried on with their day to day ignoring the restrictions & advice risking more fires, but nobody enforced the restrictions and no penalties, it was all just empty words it seems.
Fortunately the rain has arrived properly here this week and I hope the risk is over for the year, so hoping you are in the same situation soon too.

 

[Prajna]

We were very fortunate that only one house and one barn were destroyed in the village (not counting our caravans and tool sheds). Four firefighters have been killed in this year's fires here too. These fires seem to have been far worse than those of 2017, which I lived through as well.