A 67-year-old farmer has been left devastated by a fire that damaged or destroyed about 250 of his olive trees and scorched fruit trees in fields that have been in his family for 200 years.

Joe Caruana says he lost nearly half his trees and produce to the fire.

“Over 50 years of work gone. It’s terrible, so terrible,” said the heartbroken farmer as he surveyed the damage to his land in Wied il-Kbir on the outskirts of Swieqi.

As a child, Caruana would watch his father tend to the family fields. Now a pensioner, he still spends most of his time out there, harvesting and taking care of more than 400 olive trees, numerous carob, fig and orange trees, and vineyards which zigzag across his land.

On May 30, he was forced to watch as a lot of those same trees burned in a massive grass fire which started in Wied Għomor and spread to his fields.

The fire broke out at around 2 pm but was only brought under control hours later. By that time, most of the valley had been left blackened. The fire was so bad that neighbours reported ash falling on their yards and roofs.

“It breaks my heart,” Caruana told Times of Malta.

“Around 200 to 250 olive trees were damaged and most of them are burned so badly that they are a total loss.”

Of the family’s 28 tumoli of land, he calculates that 23 tumoli were engulfed by the fire. Apart from destroying so many of his olive trees, the blaze spread to his other fruit trees, years-old pine trees and vineyards.

That day, he and his sister had just sat down for lunch when she saw clouds of smoke rising from the fields at Wied Għomor.

He called his cousin, who also tends to the fields, and the two did their best to control the fire. But by the time the fire engines had arrived, the flames had spread quickly, fanned by a strong wind.

Around 200 to 250 olive trees were damaged and most of them are burned so badly that they are a total loss

The estimated damage to Caruana’s fields is about €90,000.

“The sum takes into consideration the olive trees and all the water irrigation pipes. It doesn’t consider the 50 years of hard work,” he said.

The olive trees that burned were at different stages of their life, with the youngest having just been planted in December.

“My family and I handpick the olives, which are then crushed, pressed and made into fresh olive oil. Just last year we handpicked over 20,000 olives.”

Seeking compensation

Caruana reported the fire to the police but is uncertain of receiving any compensation.

“I was informed that the government will not compensate me, and my best chance is to speak to a lawyer,” he said.

Malcolm Borg, head of farmers’ lobby Għaqda Bdiewa Attivi, said farmers are compensated for grass fires when the blaze was intentional.

“The legal opinion the group has been given is that the person who purposefully started the fire would have to compensate the farmer, but in this case, investigations are still taking place, so we cannot say what caused it,” he explained.

Another challenge for farmers is that no insurance companies offer them cover.

Borg said the government only provides compensation for farmers when 30 per cent of the national product is damaged.

“Such compensation is considered state aid by the EU, and the government must provide proof of extensive damage that affects a significant percentage of national production,” he said.

“In the 2019 storm, for example, the government had proof that the storm damaged 30 per cent of national production and so was justified to compensate farmers.”

Meanwhile, Caruana is carrying on courageously: “At first, when I saw the disaster, I thought that’s it, time to pack up, clean up and leave the land to the government.

“But then I thought to myself, what would I do, just sit at home and do nothing?”.

Causes of grass fires

Grass fires are often started by someone who throws a cigarette butt from a vehicle onto dried grass at the side of the road, according to the head of the Civil Protection Department, Peter Paul Coleiro.

“Or by someone using fire to cook or burn unwanted items, and the fire escapes the boundary and runs wild in the fields or valley,” Coleiro told Times of Malta.

He said glass bottles were less of a problem than in previous years, as today most are dark coloured and do not concentrate the sunlight enough to act as a spark.

Another cause is manure, where biological processes increase the heat so much that it may start to burn.

“CPD is sure that most fires are caused by human intervention whether intentionally or not, given that most start off by the side of the road or footpaths and then spread,” Coleiro said.

Malta experiences around 850 grass fire incidents every year. By the first week of June, there had been 174 reported, according to CPD figures.

There were 959 in 2019, a particularly bad year. This was an increase from the 651 reported grass fires of 2016, 866 the following year and 753 in 2018. The figure went up again to 889 in 2020 and last year there were 848.

Will climate change cause more grass fires? Coleiro said the increase in temperature alone does not cause fire but creates a drier environment more prone to burn.

“With a little bit of cooperation by the general public, we can reduce the number of incidents… especially the ones started by carelessness,” he said.