I walked out of the door at work after being inside all day, took one look at the sky and thought, "This is not a color of Positano." The color in the sky reminded me of pictures I have seen of smog over Los Angeles or other pollution ridden cities. With temperatures that have been wavering around 100 degrees, I thought Positano was sitting on its hillside in a new cloud of smog.
After talking to a few people I managed to get to the bottom of the strange color of the sky: just beyond the Maddonina in the hills after Positano, there was a forest fire that had been flaring since the night before. "Si รจ incendiato la montagna," the mountain caught fire. Some had seen helicopters with what looked like giant ladels scooping water from the sea, in this picture you can see the small planes that dipped down to the sea for water then circled the mountain in flames.
I was horrified but understood with that the raging heat we have been suffering, and no rain, that must be how forest fires start. Instead, my Positanese friends enlightened me that it was most likely the firefighters themselves to start the fire. When a forest fire starts like this, it brings them work and money, they do their work and use some of the money, then pocket the rest. All the Positanese are in agreement about this, but no one talks of any type of investigation or solution to this corruption.
I haven't been up past the Madonnina, just past the panini sopra alla Garritta, but I have already heard about the hillside that now looks like a balding old man, rather than the full-headed Italian Stallion of a hillside we had before.
The next danger we will face comes with the first rains. Without the trees and bushes holding the soil, the Amalfi coast is in serious danger of a landslide, a frana.
