Twisted Firestarter

There are a number of things you can do in order to have a good laugh. Kicking a shop window in, for instance. Giving someone a good kicking. What hoots. The only drawback with these is that they aren't spectaculars. There is though one way you can have a really good laugh and create a really good scene into the bargain. Set fire to something. Buildings? Not bad, but for maximum amusement, why not try entire forests? Now you're talking. One little match, some dry scrub, plenty of trees around, no obvious fire breaks, a good wind. Whoosh!

The outbreak of three fires on one day at roughly the same time and in similar positions, near to highways, is a bit of a coincidence. The Balearic Government's environment minister believes they were more than just a coincidence. Firestarters. Twisted firestarters. Yep, more than just one of them.

Mallorca's burning, Mallorca's burning, fetch the engines, fetch the engines. Pour on water, pour on water. And water is poured on from a not so great height by the helicopter bombers (an apt Anglicism given that the Catalan for firefighter is "bomber") and the Canadair.

Canadair. The word has rich resonance. The name itself, not so much in Mallorca or Spain, but in France and especially Corsica, conjures up an image of heroism.

In 1983 Corsica was ablaze. Much of the island was being torched. Deliberately. It just so happened that I was there on holiday at the height of the fires.

The geography of Corsica is quite different to that of Mallorca. A single range of mountains runs more or less the length of the island, the tallest peak being twice as high as Mallorca's Puig Major. The forests are denser, and good parts of the island are pretty much inaccessible. Combine this geography with the Mistral wind and people with boxes of matches, and you got what occurred in 1983.

The fires were that bad that tourists had to be evacuated to beaches. In Propriano where I was staying, the fires reached the hills above the resort. One night the flames were clearly visible. Local people were rounded up to go and help fight the fires.

News reports on local television were full of talk of "pyromaniacs". There were two or three in particular, all German, who the police suspected of having started many of the fires. It might have seemed like a bad time to have been a tourist in Corsica, especially as foreigners were being blamed for the conflagrations, but it was the opposite. Tourists, as outraged as the Corsicans, became involved. Some would have volunteered to help with the firefighting (we would have done), but were deterred by the police. And then there was the involvement with the Canadair.

Whenever a plane landed in the bay and took off, and this would happen for hour after hour most days, tourists joined with the locals in cheering and applauding. Sight of a Canadair produced excited pointing and chatter among children. The Canadair pilots were considered heroes; the planes themselves were heroic. The strength of the name "Canadair" has never left me.

Flying into dense woodland and dense smoke required remarkable courage. You could count the Canadair out, but you couldn't always count them back in. Cables were the greatest threats; cables that couldn't be seen by the pilots.

We were taken at one point to see the extent of the damage caused by one fire. What seemed like an entire mountainside was ash. 1983 was an ecological disaster, and it was man-made.

It takes years for forest to recover. With its burning go also the fauna and their habitats. Mallorca is called the paradise island and Corsica is the island of beauty; not though when they are on fire.

Mallorca has been spared the sort of infernos that engulfed Corsica. Because of the island's geography, the potential for massive destruction isn't as great. But this is small comfort. The fires this summer, which are likely to make 2011 one of the worst years ever, have not all been deliberate. Earlier in the summer fires near Santa Margalida and Artà were attributed to sparks from farm machinery or cars; to negligence rather than to anything pre-meditated. The later ones, however, seem more sinister, such as the three on one day and their very similar circumstances. The environmental investigation division of the Guardia Civil believes that a third of the fires this summer have been deliberate.

Why do it? Why set fire to scrub, woods or forests? Who knows the mentality of a pyromaniac, of a twisted firestarter? Just having a laugh? Go tell an heroic Canadair pilot and see if he shares the joke.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.