THE road to Dave Hollingsworth’s farm in Pine Grove, Content Gap, is lined with depressing evidence of the fires that wreaked havoc in the St Andrew hills for almost two weeks earlier this month.

The soil is a mixture of brown and black; ‘charcoaled’ trees with mustard and green leaves; bamboo blackened by the flames lean to one side as if about to fall; and utility poles stand precariously with large chunks of their base eaten away by the fires.

“I have never seen it like this, never in history,” said Hollingsworth, who was cleaning up his one-acre farm and punching some fresh holes when the Jamaica Observer stopped to talk with him last Wednesday.

The 46-year-old farmer was carrying out the chore in the hope that he can get some seedlings to start planting again.

“Is jus some seedlings I need [and] some planting material like fertiliser,” said Hollingsworth, who told the Sunday Observer that the fires destroyed his coffee, plantain, banana, and pear trees, as well as tomatoes.

Luckily for Hollingsworth his house was not affected by the fires. However, he had an initial scare when — from his vantage point at City of Refuge Children’s Home, where he had gone to help — he saw the flames heading up the hill toward his house.

“I saw that the fire was near my house, so I rushed home, but I wasn’t too worried about the house, because it is made of concrete,” he said. “But the plants — the banana, coffee, lime, pear tree, everything, dem roast. I have to start all over again,” he lamented.

Hollingsworth was obviously surprised at the speed with which the fire spread. “In a jiffy,” was how he described it. “I would say that within 15 minutes from Guava Ridge, all of up here was destroyed because of the wind. It nuh tek no time.”

— Vernon Davidson