Still burning

This week has again been quite busy with fires, not leaving me much time for research. The days have sort of merged into one, so I cannot remember what happened on which day. The most memorable episode was when large columns of smoke heading towards camp called us back from where we were back-burning at another camp (MTC). We got back to the fire break at our camp (HQ) as quickly as possible. The main parts of the fire passed between us and MTC at quite a pace, but the wind was changing and we decided to back-burn along the road from the fire break towards Roan Pan. We went slowly, but the changing wind made the fire quite unpredictable. Suddenly, it shifted and blew the fire straight across the road, where it continued at terrifying speed. I had been lighting the back-burn, so ran in front of the flames and was fine. The vehicle with the water bowser was in front of me. The hose (which one of us had been holding) came trailing along the road, which was by now covered by flames. We shouted to another guy to grab the hose and spray the flames. The guy who had been holding the hose thought we were shouting because we were in trouble, so ran along the road, straight through the flames to get to us. We managed to get that fire under control, but had to head back to try and deal with one coming towards the fire break from another direction.

A plane flew for us, which was very helpful, as the pilot pointed out several additional blazes that we would not have known about. Eventually, we managed to get everything under control. The fire flared up again in a few places over the next few days, and by then everyone was completely sick of it. We took to beating out all the flames, then spraying down logs with the bowser, and then burying those logs to make sure no sparks would fly.

Then Shavaughn and I had a couple of days break in Maun, when I also arranged with some pilots for them to record all buff herds they see over the next week.

Most of the buff have stayed in similar sort of areas. Chanel has moved south, away from the few islands that she has spent the majority of the season on. Chanel, Lasanya and Nokya have been overlapping in their ranges, and have spent some time in the same herd, but have split again quite quickly. Bianca is still in a different area to the other three.

Hopefully things will calm down now and I will be able to get out and do some fieldwork, as these fires have definitely set me back, although that is just part of living in the bush!