Joeboy wrote: ↑Mon Aug 02, 2021 12:53 pm
Close one yesterday, our village in Turkey narrowly missed going in in flames thanks to the village lads and firemen working round the clock for 3 days to beat it back. Chilling here today poolside in Crete feeling very fortunate on multiple levels and looked over at next building set. How's this for simple? Thought you lads would appreciate.
Your post reminds me of a bad situation in southern Crete in Aug 2008. We were visiting Preveli Beach which is a beautiful place, only accessible by boat or a long walk down from the main road or a short flat walk from an off road mountain track. We took the cheap lazy option via the mountain track.
On the return drive up the mountain, we were trapped in the car half way up the mountain track as the whole mountain side below us suddenly ignited. Flames in gale force winds engulfed the track in front of us and then behind us, there was no where to go, no where to hide. SWMBO was screaming as I desperately drove back and forth, into the flames, out of the flames, back in the flames again. I ripped part of the bumper off attempting a 3 point turn by reversing into the mountainside. The contrasted sight of dark black smoke and bright red flames just inches away from our faces, licking across the windscreen is something I'll never forget.
I was thinking its only a matter of time before either, we suffocate, the tyres catch fire or the petrol tank explodes. Luckily the combustible vegetation was mainly scrub and grass with very few trees, so the fire was very short lived and soon passed us by. When we drove further up the mountain we met a farming family who were in tears as they had lost their entire herd of animals to the fire. The locals in the next town told us it had not rained since February (6 months) and they had never had that situation before in living memory. Several ancient forest had been lost and that's 13 years ago now.
Preveli beach itself then burnt down in 2010, almost exactly 2 years later, see below.
The strange thing was I'd just pulled out of purchasing the house I now live in !
It was financial crisis time and I could not continue with the purchase as my own flat's value was in freefall, so we went on holiday instead. But that incident shook us up so much that nothing really mattered anymore. And when we returned I noticed the house was back on the market at a much reduced price. I still had the mortgage offer and my father lent me the deposit so I could still do the purchase without first selling my flat. So if I was still living in the flat, my renewable journey would never have even started.