When fire swept up our valley, we had an hour to choose what to keep and what to leave and let burn.
All sorts of strange things made it into the car with our two dogs – among them an oddly realistic poodle mask, a papier-mâché unicorn from Myanmar and some lavish high-heeled shoes – memories of our previous lives spent living in different places.
As the flames approached from two sides and began to surround us, we drove away leaving most of our worldly possessions behind and stood on a distant hill to nervously watch and wait.
As we hoped for the best – that my Spring of silvas bramble strimming would keep the flames from the house – the firefighting aircraft started dropping water on our valley and we began to fear the worst.
Through the smoke, we could make out our guesthouse on the hill but not our home in the valley.
Then a thick plume of black smoke ballooned up and we began to realise the things we had with us were probably all we had left – that the dreams of building a new life and an off-grid tourist lodge were most likely over.
We decided to stop punishing ourselves, turned away and drove to the beach.
The ‘Cow King’ told us it had been the first time in his 60 years that fire had reached our valley where his sister was born in the family home on the hill and where they grew melons in a place long since covered by a eucalyptus plantation.
O Rei das Vacas keeps cows happy and healthy on the land all around us and as the flames were heading our way, he sent his son with a plough to cut some fire breaks.
It probably saved our house – as did our friend Carlos who sneaked in with the fire brigade and put out spot fires while sending us photos of our miraculously un-burned home.
We were very lucky: part of the guesthouse did burn, the land was charred black and water pipes melted, but our waiting-to-be-installed (and insured) lithium batteries somehow didn’t catch fire.
A plastic tank of petrol blistered in the heat but didn’t breach or explode and all our memories and emotional attachments in the house were safe.
“De Espanha, nem bom vento, nem bom casamento,” both the Cow King and our wise old builder told us, meaning “From Spain (comes) neither good wind nor good marriage”.
Fires are as old as the Royal attempts at union which never seemed to go well for Portugal.
This happened a year ago in a place we call The Valley of the Stars, just outside São Teotónio, and when the wind came from Spain earlier this month, we again found ourselves facing the decision of what to take and what to leave behind.
The recent fire, which began at a picnic site near Odeceixe, burned for a week, destroyed homes, thousands of hectares of valleys and many of the things people had left behind.
We were fortunate and didn’t have to run to the hills again, but many did and it made international news – I reported on the fire for the BBC.
Then it provoked a mixed reaction towards the way the fire was handled.
Firefighters travelled from across Portugal to fight the fire – many were surprised by the huge generosity of local people bringing supplies of food and drink to keep them going.
People clapped, thanked them, shook hands with them as I had tearfully done a year ago, but others had stories of firefighters unable to act because of gaps in the chain of command.
The Vicentino vineyard and Frupor owner Ole Martin Siem and his staff were left to fight the fire themselves to save the vineyard and the new winery which had opened just a week earlier.
“My frustration is with the bureaucracy and the management of the fire,” said Ole Martin Siem, a Norwegian who has lived and farmed in the area for almost 40 years.
“When you have a large fire, you need good organisation at every level, but firefighters were admitting there was nothing they could do to help us because they were waiting for instructions.”
The owners of the Teima eco-lodge were also initially disappointed in the response to the fire which destroyed their land and some of their most beautiful rooms.
“Now we are looking to the future,” said Francisco Camacho, son of the owners Luísa Botelho and veteran Portuguese journalist Paulo Camacho.
The family spent years building up the property into an award-winning tourism lodge and are now raising money to repair the damage and reopen.
“It was very chaotic because this was a very large fire and many people had problems everywhere,” he said.
“If we had stayed here, we would have been able to save the building as it burned very slowly.”
But with an intense fire spreading so quickly, the priority was to save lives and more than 1,400 people were evacuated from their homes.
Whether to stay or to go is a big question – during our fire, we were advised to stay and save our home – but we feared being cut off, and there are other measures which can be taken.
Firstly, we have learned to keep the land clean of weeds – not just in the 50m around buildings as required by law – and are considering sheep, goats or donkeys to do the work for us.
Plans for wooden decks over the valley have been shelved, gravel is our new friend and although water is in short supply, sprinklers for buildings and flood irrigation plans to create a buffer to snuff out the fire are all on the table – it can make a huge difference.
While Bombeiros brigades may struggle with bigger blazes, friends have been designing their own mobile firefighting kits with a generator and a water tank on a truck to take things into their own hands – like the staff at Vicentino who saved their land and their grapes.
Fire is a scary thing, but it’s also a natural thing … why else did cork trees evolve a natural layer of fire protection, or do eucalyptus plantations grow back so quickly?
More regular wildfires are becoming a reality across Europe – and worldwide – as temperatures rise and climate change starts to bite, and so we have to adapt and take care.
Sprawling eucalyptus forests may provide the fuel, but disposable barbecues and summer tourists can sometimes provide the spark and huge consequences.
A year on from the fire in the Valley of the Stars, we are amazed how quickly the land bounced back and everything became green again as nature does its work.
- There are a number of fundraising drives to help people who suffered losses in the Odemira fire. This GoFundMe page was set up by Jason Horton, a British resident in the area, to directly help people in the community who were affected. If you’d like to donate, or know someone who could benefit from their fund please go to the page.
Alastair Leithead is a former BBC foreign correspondent now living off the grid in rural Odemira. We writes the blog “Off-grid and Ignorant in Portugal” on Substack here and is on Insta @vale_das_estrelas
