The Fire of '23

Ok it's been a just over a week now since the huge wildfire tore through our valley, the dust and ash has settled and we've started to get back to normal life.

I've took a look over some of the footage I got (mostly shaky phone unfortunately) to watch the chilling few days back since we were living it.

It started as a very normal day, I was building a bench for the deck, engrossed in it, until I heard two fire planes overhead. Nothing unusual there, but when they returned back overhead 20 seconds later still dripping water I felt the blood drain from my face. Looking up over the tree line, Smoke was filling the sky.

Within 10 mins we were packed down and out, we had a preplanned fire evacuation point the other side of the mountain and upon arrival I started to think perhaps this was a slight over reaction. It didn't take long to realise our decision was the right one, The road we had driven on, the nearby village we'd driven through, our valley and the mountain itself was on fire, flames reaching 30ft in the air, jumping incredible distances to reach the other side of the valley and whipped into flaming tornados by violent wind. Even our evac. point was no longer safe, we left and it too was burnt come morning.

We had to wait 4 days to be able to return, while over 1000 Bombeiros & 14 air units battled the fires that broke out into 4 fronts. Until our area was put out we would just be in their way.

The entire area is scorched, the fire was so big the smoke could be seen from space, driving back through was not a pleasant experience to say the least and I was convinced we'd lost the land, but by some miracle it was spared.

Above are a few stills to give you an idea of the scale of it all. and the last two photos you can see just how close it got to us.

We now look out over a bare and blackened mountain, which is sad to see, but also serves as a constant reminder at how lucky we are and how grateful to the Bombeiros (Fireservice) we are as they had fought the fire literally at our door step. They were all over the place when we returned and it was clear without them our place would have gone up. They didn't have to stop the fire here, the nearest village is another mile or so up the hill, but they did.

I'm still a little lost for words about the whole situation, so it's probably a good thing I've got 7-8 more videos before this one 😆 maybe by then I'll have re-grouped a bit. But it's definitely been an "interesting" few weeks.

Portugal life! 🤷🏼‍♂️ this was one of our nightmares and it came true, but because we feared it we planned for it, our plan was put into place and we are ok. No reported deaths, only 11 injuries, but thousands of square miles burnt.

There will be something coming up in the Broken Down series that was filmed way before all this that now holds a whole new meaning for me, you'll see it shortly.

Feeling extremely lucky right now.

As I typed that some ash just blew in through the door.

Take care,

C.J