Almost Connected; A Fire

July 17, 2014

     Tuesday following the Bastille Day holiday this past Monday, I planned to work tooth and nail to get connected to the Internet, as well as to get my phone and internet set up.  Christine and Robert, my friends at "La Marbrerie, suggested I call Monsieur Chabbert, the electrician and appliance dealer in Trausse.  I bought my washer and my dishwasher from Chabbert last year, which might be why that afternoon, when I called, his son, Clement was at 10 porte de Narbonne in 30 minutes.

     Amazingly, Clement was able to set up my TV, phone and Internet in 90 minutes, using an additional piece of equipment his father drove to the house to drop off.  I could not quite believe that it all worked out, and I still have not received the bill for the work.

     Not that I got to use the services much, as my visitors, Claudia and Richard, flew in to Salvazza Tuesday morning, and they have kept me busy the three days.  However, we had reason to turn on the television early this evening when we spotted the clouds of smoke from a forest fire burning in the direction of the villages of Laure and Villefranche, on the way to Carcassonne.  The television had no information, the news focusing on the downing of a Malaysian jet bound for Kuala Lumpur flying over Ukranian airspace.  Claudia and Richard stayed behind to start dinner, while I walked Beau and searched for information about the fire from the villagers.

     Fréderic Guiraud, the chef and owner of the Renaissance hôtel, the D'Alibert --which he runs as a hotel and restaurant-- was sitting at his usual table in front of the hotel, relaxing before the evening dinner service had to be prepared.  I asked him whether he knew anything about the fire.

     "Oh, yes, it's a downed electrical tower."

     "Is there any chance the wind might blow the fire here?"

     Fréderic, who's a bit of a comedian, told me that if the fire were to get to Caunes, he would have been long gone.

     "No, there's nothing to worry about."

     Indeed, there was not, because throughout the next few hours, military planes carrying tanks of water on each wing doused the flames, circling around to drop off the canisters, then turning back to base to pick up more.  There were at least eight planes in the air at any one time.  After a few hours, looking on from the terrace at 10, porte de Narbonne, the smoke dissipated and it was as if nothing had happened.  Unfortunately, that will surely not be the case in the immediate area of the fire.

     With the summer sun turning everything around into firewood, the Service des Fôrets is vigilant, keeping fire watchers posted in the heights of La Montagne Noir and Les Corbières, the two mountain ranges between which Caunes and the Minervois of which it forms part, sit.  I have come upon fire  watchers standing in front of their trucks looking out across the forests while hiking past the Carrière du Roy.   In other parts of the France, in the even more elevated regions of the Massif Central, the chain of mountains that stretches from the Cevennes (La Montagne Noir being the foothills thereof) to the Alps, men spend the day in giant towers constructed atop mountains to permit maximum visibility of anything that might look light the start of a forest fire.  The hotter the summer, the more the forest becomes kindling.

     I wonder whether the tumbling of the electrical pylon that started tonight's fire might be related to the collapse of my TV reception.  All of a sudden I no longer have a signal strong enough to bring in the TV channels.  So near, and yet so far…tomorrow I have to call Chabbert again.