One of the last memories from my country, before flying to India a couple of months ago, was a brutal forest fire, the most deadly ever in Portugal. It got stuck in my head for its obvious scale, but also for being less that 50km from my family’s home in Central Portugal, a region where forest fires are like swords hanging above everyone’s heads every Summer. Things weren’t much better after my return: that same region has been struck hard by a series of fires that burned almost every green patch of forest that left, but at least the death toll remained the same.
Can’t ignore something as close to me as this, and now wonder how things will be after September, when the subject disappears from the front covers of newspapers and the ones who live there must cut the burned trees and rebuild everything.
#portugal #beirabaixa #forest #fires
