LETTER FROM NICOSIA:GLOBAL WARMING has come to Cyprus. It ambushed us with a fourth year of drought.
The traditional cycle is three years of scarce rain and a fourth of plenty. We had only five or six days of good rain this year.
The annual 50 days of dust haze from the Libyan desert, called the hamseen in Arabic, stretched to 100 days, from March until June.
Heat waves began in May, when temperatures rose to the 39 and 41 degrees normal in July and August. They have become our daily fare.
Everything is warm to the touch: walls, floors, clothes. Buildings just manage to cool before the heat resumes. The countryside is burnt brown, gardens are gasping. Households receive water three times a week for a few hours.
Forest fires began early, before midsummer's day and with the ferocity conceived of three years of drought. Six villages in the hills were evacuated and six holiday homes destroyed before the first major inferno was brought under control.
Ninety-six fire engines, seven helicopters, one plane, and 320 firefighters bolstered by national guard forces, foresters, and local people battled the blaze set by arsonists.
A few days later, I was driving with a visitor along a winding mountain road when we spotted a pillar of black smoke rising from the opposite slope. Rounding a bend, we found cars parked on the verges, passengers standing and watching flames leap from brush to tree, engulf a small shed, and threaten red-tile roofed houses of two villages. This fire, caused by two careless welders, killed a young policeman, the first fatality of the year, and stripped the hillside of trees and brush. That weekend there were 68 smaller fires, many started by feuding villagers. Firefighters are forbidden to take water from reservoirs, depleted to 4 per cent of capacity.
This means aircraft have to rely on the sea, far from blazes raging at the island's centre.
Sofocles Aletraris, senior engineer at the Water Development Department, said: "This is the worst situation we have faced in 30 years. We have never had four years of drought in a row. We never planned for such a disaster."
But then, few governments have made plans to tackle the effects of global warming. Some even deny its existence.
He describes our desperate situation in stark figures. The annual demand for water is 67 million cubic metres; the water stored by dams combined with the output of two desalination plants amounts to only 50 million cubic metres per annum, the deficit being 17 million cubic metres.
"This means there is zero water for farmers," he stated.
Irrigation used to account for 70 per cent of consumption. But in March, the Council of Ministers cut out farmers and reduced by 30 per cent the flow to households.
The tourism sector - the island's chief money-maker - receives its normal allocation of less than 10 per cent. Resentful Cypriots note that golf courses - which should never have been built in the first place - have been cut by only 30 per cent because they are classed as tourist facilities. Tourists must not be frightened away.
Cyprus has drawn up a plan to beat the water crisis. Eight million cubic metres are to be imported in tanker ships from Greece. Although the first ships arrived more than a week ago, no water has reached shore because of faulty connections between undersea and land pipes. Experts report that the water may now be polluted. Limassol, beneficiary of the Greek water, is set to run out by month's end. Once the faults are fixed, the tankers should halve the deficit.
Two mobile desalination plants are to be installed in the sea off Limassol and Paphos, a third facility will treat brackish water from boreholes, and the capacity of two existing desalination plants will be expanded. But no one can predict how we will cope during this sizzling season and whether enough rain will fall next winter to fill the reservoirs and allow the parched forests and thirsty land to recover.
