The Fire at Keela: What Actually Happened

We had a fire surround our whole land, a very scary 24 hours, we were safe due to the good land management practices and help from very brave friends and firemen who headed into danger. But the damage is significant. Here is my account of what happened.

Day two of the PDC

On the 3rd of November, during the second day of our PDC, one of our guests saw smoke in the distance. This is quite common, because we live in a region where there are a lot of fires. The smoke is often much further away than it looks, and even when it is nearby, it usually gets dealt with very fast by the fire brigade or by neighbours.

I went to have a look, and the fire did look closer than normal. It must have been about 1 kilometre from the farm, but I wasn’t too alarmed. I thought it would probably get put out. I called the fire brigade first, and then I called the neighbours to let them know. They went over with their fire trucks (most farmers here have a little fire truck).

I went back to the guests and told them there was a fire nearby and it was probably fine. I suggested they go and get their passports just to be safe, and that we pause the next lesson and go through our fire evacuation plan instead, as a rehearsal, which is good practice anyway. I said that if I whistled, we would all meet in the car park, and nobody would leave until we knew everyone was there. Everyone went to get their passports, and we got a bug out bag ready.

Evacuating the family and guests

Then I had a call from one of the neighbours who had gone to the fire. He thought the wind was coming our way and that it would be best if we all left. So I whistled, everyone met in the car park, and they headed off to the village along with my baby and partner.

Preparing the farm

I stayed to take care of the farm and carry out my fire evacuation plan: getting rid of petrol and gas bottles, securing the animals and putting on sprinklers. While I was doing that, I noticed that one of my friends, Jonathan, who was in fact on my farm that day, giving a forestry class and helping make the forest more fire-safe! I thought he had gone home, but he was already at my house with a hosepipe, watering around it. That was quite surprising. At the same time, another farmer Luis arrived with a team and a huge cistern of water on the back of a tractor, with a fire hose. Another farmer Adreano came with a tractor and was ploughing my land to stop the fire, as fire does not pass ploughed land. He stationed himself where the fire was approaching our land. Then Rick, another friend whom I told not to come, suddenly appeared with a hoe, and we were fighting the fire with spades and hoes on one side of the farm.

The fire arrives

The police arrived at the house. I was running around to different areas in a bit of a panic and exhausting myself. The police suggested keeping the area wet on one side of the house, so we did that. The fire was then approaching on another side of the farm, so I went to put that out.

The origin of the fire came from the north, but it didn’t enter our land directly because we have fire breaks, so it went around the two sides. It burned through the neighbours land very quickly and set fire to the trees above. Those bigger flames are what caught the cork trees on my boundary. Once the fire got into my farm, the land was clean, so there were not too many big fires. It generally moved slowly through the grass towards my house, and we were able to put the different small fires out with spades.

The fire brigade eventually came to my house, where there was a bigger fire on the neighbouring property on the east, again coming slowly into our land through the grass, and they put that out. The yoga deck caught fire. Amazingly, the fire also went underneath loads of invasive species, mimosa and eucalyptus, where we had really cleaned under the trees. I had always wondered whether the fire would pass underneath or whether the trees would catch fire. They didn’t catch fire. The fire passed under, and the fire brigade put it out.

The fire continued around the neighbour’s property to my south side. At the same time, it started coming down the east side. At this point we had fire and smoke all around the farm. There was some risk that the barn would burn, but the fire brigade were there, and it was too big for me to help with. Then the aeroplanes came with water, and the whole farm was full of smoke. We were running from side to side.

A lot of friends tried to come and help but the roads were closed, but one friend Marteen just drove through the closure and turned up with a pickup truck with a pump and fireman’s hose to come and fight the fire. He asked where he could help, but I was in a state of panic and didn’t know what to do really. I just kept digging soil and moving from place to place.

The night

As it got dark, another group of friends (Chris, Paul and more) arrived with spades and fire bashers. We went around putting out the little fires that were everywhere in the dark. Another small fire was coming towards the barn, and we put that out. With my friend’s fire truck, we put out loads of little fires.

Later, it seemed safe. The firemen were sitting outside the land and everyone had left. All of the guests were at the cafe, and our chef said to come to her house. Some stayed in the cafe’s flat, some went to my chef’s house, and I stayed on the farm overnight, going around checking for fires and putting little ones out. I was alone, surrounded by smouldering logs but safe.

The morning after

In the morning I went around to see the damage. There were little bits of burning material all over the land. Some friends came to the farm, and our volunteers insisted on coming back to help with recovery and safety (legends). We all spent the day putting out fires and trying to fix fencing, because a lot of it was broken and there was nowhere for the sheep to go without escaping. During the fire, the sheep had been breathing a lot of smoke, and it was hard to find a good place to put them.

The family returned to the farm and Friends helped with the fencing, and others went to get materials, which I have to pay them for. We also managed to get other projects similar to ours, Spirala, Limar and Macarba, to take all of our guests for a day to entertain them, and to stay another night, just to be on the safe side in case the fire started again. We spent the rest of the day managing the fires on the land, and the fire brigade were around all day. The next night, all the guests came back, and the following morning we tried our best to continue the course while also dealing with the post fire trauma, stress and recovery.

The damage

There is a lot of damage to the land, especially around the boundaries. Our neighbours’ land wasn’t fire safe, so all of our boundary fence burnt. In some places the fire couldn’t come into our land because it was well managed, and in other places it came in very slowly, so it was easy to put out. And in some it burnt a huge amount of big and small cork trees. We lost 100s of trees we have been taking care of for years. The main problem is the big trees on the neighbours’ properties that caught fire.

Since then I have been talking to the neighbours to see if I can get them to take part in fire security. Some of them have already shown interest, although I did speak to them about it in past years about it, but I can see they have a different attitude now.

Thank you

One of the things that always seems to happen when there are fires here is that they bring the community together. I have since heard that other people came to my land to fight the fire, farmers with trucks who put water on it. I never saw them. They came, emptied their water and left.

Also 100s of messages offering help on the night, offering accommodation and offering help the next days.

So I want to say thank you to all of my friends, to the people I don’t know, and to the firemen and the police, for helping put this fire out and keeping us informed.

Many of the people who came to help have had fires at their own places, or at their friends’ places. I could see they had been through this before, and it was good to have them there. I thanked one of them, and he said, “Oh, you’ll do it for me.” I said, “Oh, would I?” He said, “Yeah, I remember 2017, actually. You did come to my house to help.” It’s true. I have been to other people’s houses when there have been fires, or afterwards, to help. I never did it to get help back, because I always hoped we wouldn’t have one here.

The one thing I think would really help is if every homestead had a fire truck. By that I mean a 1,000 litre tank full of water, with a pump and a hose, on the back of a trailer or a truck. The more help there is, the less damage happens to people’s properties if you are unlucky enough to have a fire.

What’s next

We are now setting up a crowdfunding campaign. It is not just to help us recover, but to give a kickstart to our land restoration and reforestation programme. That programme has come to a halt, because it has been expanding year after year to the point where we can’t manage any more trees or land without machinery. We also want to put in more infrastructure to become even more fire-resilient and show other people how that can be done. We want to get land restoration tools that we can use to improve our soil and lend to people around here. With our own fire truck, we would also be available to help people nearby if they have fires.