Paulo Novais/Lusa
Belarmino Simões next to the flock of goats and sheep that saved the fire in codessal in the Serra da Lousã during the fire that beaten the mountain over the past week.
Belarmino Simões, 64, does not know where he arranged strength, but when he saw the fire approach his village in Lousã acted more than 300 water buckets of 20 liters to save his flock of goats and sheep.
“I have never seen such a thing in my life,” he says Belarmino Simões To the Lusa agency, upset, while looking at the annex where he lost tractor, plow and agricultural implements, in the small town of Codessais, in the municipality of Lousã.
On August 15, when the fire that affected the Serra da Lousã, a week ago, approached the village, Belarmino saved its flock from 50 sheep and goatsbut little more.
On the way to your home, in addition to the burning annex, you find blood footprints from your pork, which walked distressed to your house, already without hooves in the folders, where it died, with the guts out. “He came to die here, asking for help”regrets.
By the village, the little green seen is from a walnut tree where there were clean land.
“There is not even a kale sheet to put in the pan. There is nothing“, He laments, pointing to other land that is not his and who were full of Silva and Mato -” If I was, I am poor, I was sanded, “he criticizes.
“A lifetime in this”
That day, he could only think of the flock – was born in the middle of the sheep and goats in Santo António da Snow, on the top of Serra da Lousã. “It’s my livelihood,” he says.
Without light and without water, she stuck 20 liters buckets a dusty and slope to reach the corral where she already had the goats and sheep stuck, helping with a well of a neighbor.
“Going down the way, holding the bucket and my legs… Oh gentlemen, but there I managed to save the flock,” he says.
Went up and down the stony path 300 timeshe says, in a combat made among the citizens who live there – they only saw GNR at 6:30 pm, when he refused to leave the village. The flames still licked the corral, but the continuous water buckets managed to sustain the advance.
“If the fire catches the corral and the cattle would start to die, I would die at their foot. It was a lifetime in this ”Vinca Belarmino Simões.
Since the fire has passed and without pasture, it has been valid from donations that are coming from various parts of the country, with cabbage, bananas and straw bales. In the middle, he realizes that if it were not for the work of goats around the village before the fire, the fire would have entered another violence.
“But who today wants to be a pastor today?”Asks Belarmino, who only runs away from discouragement as soon as he sees two small goats in the corral that run to greet him.
Belarmino’s daughter plays, “He exchanged me for this and I’m his daughter. I begged him to get out of cattle.”
For the future, Belarmino does not know what to tell, after a life also done without much aid. Asked about the government’s support promised to farmers, Belarmino suspects.
“Call me in two months to know if I received the support,” he says.
