Beating the bushfire drum

But, alas, my very first ride in a helicopter was not to be. It seems Alcoa changed its (their?) mind . . . I had hopes, too of a gentleman calling from Houston, Texas who was anxious to fill me in on the petrochemical industry in general and ethylene in particular (which just goes to show how far Sunday Newsday reaches when we, or at any rate I, least expect it). That, too, will have to wait. We are stuck with bushfires yet again, like it or not.

Until five weeks ago (give or take a day or so) Forestry were all smiles.

For the second year in succession Trinidad and Tobago had no dry season worth talking about. It was hard luck for visitors wanting to get a tan, or improve on the one they already had, but ecotourists are a hardy lot, a little rain never stops them; it’s so much cooler walking in the bush when it’s overcast or there is a light drizzle to refresh one and rinse away the sweat. Then, too there’s a chance of seeing more wildlife, that, sensibly, shun the sun because, as Noel Coward famously remarked, only mad dogs and Englishmen (and women) go out in the midday sun.

Five weeks ago the weather did an abrupt U-turn; the sun blazed down, the drying winds blew, in no time the Queen’s Park Savannah grass withered. Instead of an expanse of green, all was brown – dun, drear and dry. Forestry gnawed its collective nails, fearing for the bush and precious plantations of timber.

The Fire Services braced for action. NGOs taking part in the National Reafforestation and Watershed Rehabilitation Pro-gramme checked over their fire-fighting equipment, their beaters and their backpacks for water and hoped against hope that the trees they had planted and tended for the past 18 months or more would escape the conflagration.

I’ve not been in touch with Protectors of the Environment in Surrey Village, or Forestry, or the HQ of the National Reafforestation — etc — programme in Arima, but I’m sure they, too were preparing to fight fires set by traitors, by those determined to destroy this land, to reduce it to another Haiti. I know (because I live in the area) that the Fondes Amandes Community Re-Forestation Project team organised their annual “Len’ Hand” day when all residents, not only those involved in regular work on the project, are invited to come together to help cut fire traces (or provide fuel in the shape of food and drink for those cutting bush) to protect the hillside and the cultivation that has led to the re-birth of a spring.

To date I’ve seen no less than four bushfires in the Cascade St Ann’s area alone — and I’m sure there have been more, further up the valleys, that I’ve not seen. At least three, to my certain knowledge, were malicious fires, set by those who enjoy setting fires, those who wanted to scare local residents, who hoped to see the Fire Services racing up the valley yet again to “out” a bush fire threatening the houses of rich and poor alike.

Gardeners did not set those fires because those lands have long been exhausted. When I first moved into the Cascade valley all the hills were covered with bush. Then, no thanks to Government imposing a $20-an-acre tax on idle land, the owners rented the land to gardeners who set fires to clear the bush. For a year, or three or four, the gardeners grew tomatoes on the cleared land — but made no attempt to terrace the land to save the soil. Without a tree canopy to protect the land, rainy season after rainy season the topsoil was washed away to the Gulf. Today the only crop on the hill I can see from my office window is lastro. No one has planted tomatoes there for many a long year.

On May 4, I risked parking at a supermarket (only those who have parked there know what a hair-raising business that is) to photograph yet another malicious bushfire on Lady Chancellor.

However, due to the constraints on my small camera, and an uncooperative cloud on the skyline that spoiled the view of smoke rising in a clear blue sky, I doubt my photograph will reproduce well enough for Newsday. . .

Although the pouis are blooming and we’ve had a shower or two of rain in the past week, smoke from bushfires on the hills is a reminder that there are still those among us determined to reduce the hills to a desert, to a veritable wilderness of rock and stone where not even lastro can grow.

Is this what we can look forward to in 2020? And the floods that follow as the night the day? Or is government with all that oil and gas money, going to get serious about bushfires to save our hills – and our water resources?

annehilton@rave–tt.net