Today we went to Nanyuki and around midday we began to see billowing smoke coming from up from the Mt. Kenya forest. We were told that the fire has been going for several days, that the British Army was helping to contain it and that it appeared to be largely contained this morning. Winds in the afternoon though got the fire raging and now at 9:00 at night almost the entire Mountain is aglow in embers. At Tumaren we are 70km from Mount Kenya and the ring of fire looks to cover a very substantial area from here. We can only hope that much of the primordial forests are spared and that much of the burning is in the understory and not in the canopy of the large Olives and Cedars. Hopefully we will know more in the morning.
Donations made here are
Nov 2nd Pirjo I USD 220.00
8 Comments
Any idea how the fire may have started? Please give us updates when possible.
thanks for this report. apparently Aberdares and Longonot are also aflame. If you ever see fires do report to the hotline at Kenya Forest Working Group 0726 816000; 0736 600700
I don’t know how this started. I can see today that the wind is picking up the fire again. hopefully someone with more firsthand knowledge in Nanyuki might jump in and inform us more…
I’m in Nanyuki right at the edge of the forest (2,200m up) and it looks pretty bad. Definitely worse than this morning. The 5 separate fires we had in the morning seem to have joined along the way. Some of them started half way up the mountain and have now reached its top. Not sure how it looks on the other side, i.e. whether the fire has already crossed it. At 7.15pm at night you see the flames from miles away. It looks like lava flow. Definitely more flames than this morning but the smaller fire across the hill near Mount Kenya Safari Club seems to be under control.
Small addition: my guess is that the fires were started by charcoal burners and/or beekeepers. There are, unfortunately, a lot of them in the area… The fires to the North are along a tracking route. There are also a lot of people in the villages who seem to believe that by starting fires they force rainfall. …except this ain’t happening!!
Juliane, thanks for the report. if you get any new news will you let us know. thanks, James
The mountain is still burning now making its way around to the south side. The fires seem to shift a lot, are out for a few hours or days and then start again. There’s so much smoke by now that you can’t see the mountain anymore making it very difficult to spot new fires. There are also a lot of grass fires which you can’t make out as there’s very little smoke and they literally creep up unnoticed. Two big fires are being brought under control by the community, army and the KWS so lets hope that someone will continue watching those areas later on.
Thanks for the report Juliane. Can you determine to what extent the fires have damaged the most mature forests?