A couple weeks ago, a large hillside area over Sucker Garden in the Dutch side burned. Apparently a fire to burn brush or trash had gotten out of control. Luckily, there were no serious injuries or houses burned. Although it was perhaps the largest fire in recent memory, the fire department was able to get it under control, and in some places slave walls (stone walls from colonial times) stopped the spread.

I was in the area on Friday, and took a few minutes to walk the area. I was particularly interested to see if any animal remains would be there, particularly the Leeward Island racer, a snake which is effectively extinct on the island. As it turned out, aside from thousands of burnt and crumbling snail shells, there wasn’t much to see. It was quite odd, though, to walk through the burned area. As you can see in the photos, without grass and brush, it’s very clear how little soil there is in much of the island.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 13th, 2011 at 9:42 am and is filed under Les Fruits sur la Terre, Pour les Sciences. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.