THEY HAVE called it the greatest ever fire in Cyprus.
The government has labelled it as an ecological disaster of “gigantic proportions”. Authorities have not even begun counting the cost of the blaze and authorities are claiming it will take decades to restore the mountain area to its former glory.
One thing is for certain though. Whatever picture or image from the television you see, it cannot possibly be representative of the extent of the damage. You actually had to have been there to be able to recall the facts.
Driving to the area on Friday afternoon, the first sign of the magnitude of the blaze was the thick black clouds of smoke, coupled with the unmistakable smell of burning woodland.
Going past three road blocks that had been set up by police and national guardsmen to stop people from making their way to the area, the advice was to drive slow and stay alert.
Officials from the fire department refilling their water supplies from garden hoses in adjacent villages were aided by local residents arriving with water canisters, willing to assist in the battle against the mountain blaze.
Early in the evening, the flames had spread to both sides of the winding roads, with fire fighters struggling to cope against the flames that were multiplying by the minute. The main problem for the authorities in the fight to extinguish the fire was that they were facing an uneven battle. This was not a concerted effort to put out a massive blaze, but dozens of fires raging out of control on a number of fronts.
Both sides of the road were covered in thick black ash that gave the atmosphere an eerie feel to it.
The danger element for the hundreds of fire fighters, forestry department and civil defence workers, in addition to police officers and national guardsmen that were on call, was not just consigned to the flames.
Stones and rocks slid down from the cliffs onto the side of the road after they cracked and exploded from the extreme heat of the fire.
Amid the confusion and flurry of media activity, at a nearby crisis-control centre where leading politicians gathered, the mood was quiet and the feeling of shock and disbelief ruled over any other emotions.
A family could do nothing but stare at the remains of their house that had been burnt to the core, while other slightly luckier home-owners were doing their utmost to prevent the fire from spreading to their homes by spraying water from their garden hoses to put out the flames.
Even though the extent of the damage could not be measured at the time, the villages of Saittas, Fylagra and Kato Amiandos appeared to be the worst affected.
One of the most ironic things on the Friday afternoon, as the villages of Kato Amiandos and Pelendri had already been evacuated, was that signposts with the words: “It is illegal to light fires” and “Nature Trail” were still standing despite the pine trees and shrubland around them covered in ash.
While officials and volunteers continued their efforts well into the darkness, the overnight prayers appeared to have been answered just after noon yesterday. While the sun beat down hard on the rest of the island, the heavens opened and the downpour that ensued gave long-awaited relief to the scorched earth of the mountain range.
On the way up to Saittas in the aftermath of the disaster yesterday, fire brigades and National Guard vehicles were still on standby and they will remain so for a few more days until the area is declared safe from another blaze.
The mood was entirely different, with the urgency and speed with which everyone had been moving the night before making way for a more laboured approach, people walking around looking at the state of what used to be their lush green plots of land.
Electricity Authority workers were on duty trying to fix electricity cables that had been destroyed in the fire.
As the rain continued to fall onto the ash-covered ground, the only thing that remained of the conflagration was some shrubland still smouldering.
On the road from Saittas to the village of Pelendri that had been evacuated on Friday afternoon, most trees had been completely burnt, leaving behind thick black ash where the green cover of the pine forest could be seen on Friday morning.
With the debate over the cause of the fire set to rage on, locals and members of the Forestry Department were already on hand to give explanations as to why some patches of the forest appeared untouched by the blaze. The flames, fanned by strong winds and the soaring heat, were spread by birds and exploding pine cones.
Airborne birds caught fire and took the flames to another part of the forest before spiralling to the ground, while pine cones are known to explode in high temperatures.
Arriving at the village of Pelendri in the afternoon, residents were already trying to move about their business as normal. A middle-aged man was having a haircut and an old-fashioned shave at the local barber shop, while the village coffee shop next door was packed with residents recalling their own stories from the previous evening.
The fire had been put out on the fringes of the village, thanks largely to the efforts of the large number of local volunteers.
From every person there was a different story to be told, with one resident claiming to have fought “face to face” with the blaze, and others arguing as to why their village had remained unaffected by the disaster.
As the personal stories continued and would probably continue well into the evening, one thing was a certainty as the island came to terms with the aftermath of the heat wave and the mountain blaze hell: the largest ever fire on the island would be the topic on everyone’s lips for a long, long time.
