Fires are a very common occurrence during the winter here. We've never really been told why everyone burns pretty much everything, it's just the way things are done. We assume that burning weeds and tall dry grass is cheaper and faster than mowing, and it also probably has something to do with making the soil more fertile for crops. Though much of what we see burning is not farm land.
Some fires are probably accidental, and some are probably set by kids messing around (we're pretty sure one near our our house was set by kids.)
Lincoln and I were driving home from Phokeng (about 25 minutes from our house) and I happened to have our camera with us. In that 25 minute drive I saw probably close to 20 fires.
Coming from Colorado, where fires like these would cause mass evacuations, it still freaks me out a little to see this!
The above and below fires were right next to the highway. Often the smoke will be so thick on the highway that visibility is almost zero.
Three separate fires burning.
This is the road coming into Rustenburg, on the horizon you can see the smoke from all of the fires. We breathe this junk every day!
A few days before I took the above pictures, the fields around our house were set on fire.
This is our front yard and our dog, Rocco.
The two pictures below were taken out of my bedroom window. The concrete wall is the edge of our yard, and about 10 feet away from our house.
The pictures above and below are of our backyard.
The kids have now seen enough fires to know that we are relatively safe. Here, Madison poses by the fire.
This is how the field in front of our house now looks. It will stay like this until it rains again, probably not until September or October.
~Jenny
We have the same thing going on here, and we are in a very urban area. Our yard right now is littered with black ash that lands here, carried by the wind from the fire(s) to our yard.
ReplyDeleteOne word of warning -- never never never get so used to the smell of "something burning" that you stop investigating things in the kitchen. Two or three times now the kids have reported "something is burning" and I've brushed it off as an outside fire (since 99% of the time, it is!) only to discover someone, not me, had started water boiling and forgotten about it. Forgotten for so long the water was all evaporated and bottom of the pan now burnt.
What our lungs will look like when we get out of here....oye. Still, likely better than the pollution we were used to in our chemical plant laden area of the US.....
Stay safe!