In August 2006, Hifas da Terra was hit by one of the most devastating fires the area had seen in decades. All of Galicia was burning, and in Pontevedra the smoke from the different fires blocked out the sky. The fire that reached us started in Tenorio and, after two days, arrived in Bora, engulfing the whole hillside.
The '30-30-30' conditions were all there – temperatures above 30 °C, winds over 30 km/h and humidity below 30% – so the fire leapt from treetop to treetop, burning almost all our plantation, including chestnut trees over 30 years old for which we had received a rural landscaping award.
Not a single greenhouse survived, and the production bags inside them created a fire that took days to put out. The Shiitake plantation was partly saved thanks to the moisture from irrigation, but the nursery, with that year's plants, burned completely.
I was at the beach when they called me, and I drove to Bora in my mother's automatic car – which, for some reason, kept lurching back and forth whenever I stopped. At the police checkpoint I explained that I needed to get up to the company… and the poor officers, seeing the car shaking, thought I was the one trembling! It took a couple of minutes to convince them it was only the car.
They let me through, but I couldn't reach the company: the flames had already cut off the road, rising higher than ten-year-old eucalyptus trees. The TV crews were there, and there I was in beach flip-flops, covered in ash. After an hour or more of unbearable heat, we met up with the Hifas team, put out the flames and managed to reach the house.
We put out the remaining flames and went to help at other houses: the damage at Hifas was done, and others were having a much harder time. For months we cleaned a hillside of charcoal; tools were ruined and the smell stayed with us so strongly that, even today, looking at the photos, we can almost smell it.
The chestnut trees were pruned to help them recover, the whole hillside was cleared, wells and irrigation systems were replaced and the soil was regenerated. We lost a great deal in that tragedy, but nature, our team's effort and a big investment helped us rebuild. Today, after a lot of work, I want to show you how we were in August 2006 – and how we were by May 2008.