Tonight we know what's causing the sleeping giant to smoke: it's not a rising volcano; it's not a steam vent cracked open in the earth; it's not a meteor from the heavens; not aliens crashed to earth and not an act of God.
It's what's called leaf litter, possibly decades worth of it, accumulated on the forest floor - and then, struck by lighting.
The Chief Forest Officer explained it to us via Zoom today:
Wilber Sabido, Chief Forest Officer
"On Saturday, we actually along with the geologists from the petroleum department, five of their personnel and two of ours visited the site that was labeled as smoking and we took about 5 ½ hours to reach the sight, very, very difficult terrain and basically what we found was what we were thinking is that the source of the fire is consistent with a lightning strike, which was about June 8th. the same time that we had a number of lightning strikes occurring or lightning storms occurring throughout the country."
But this wasn't any ordinary forest fire. It's a forest fire with a seemingly endless supply of fuel.
Wilber Sabido, Chief Forest Officer
"You basically have layers upon layers, upon layers of leaf-litter of organic matter of the trees and remember this area was also impacted a couple of years back by a hurricane and so you do have basically all of these conditions, basically ripe for like I said any type of ignition."
"Now when we had the rains coming, if you recall right after, they don't necessarily penetrate into the base of that leaf litter and that is what basically caused the smoke to basically form a chimney of sorts, which is what people were speculating over."
But over the weekend residents in the area saw flames.
Wilber Sabido, Chief Forest Officer
"We also got a report yesterday evening that the villagers and the people living in the surrounding area saw flames visible from in the distance. So it seems that the smoldering has actually become a fire and the flames are now visible."
"The risk is that given the weather conditions as they are presently and I know over the past couple days, we are experiencing temperatures in the mid 90s, so it means that the leaf litter, the organic matter is becoming drier and drier, and so there's the risk of the fire becoming more intense and spreading and it would move more uphill as to threatening any residents or any communities at the base of the mountain. However, what we want to prevent is any further burning of the natural area and so one of the options that we're looking at is an attack using the helicopters that would basically drench the area that's under fire."
But before that happens - the rains may get there first
Wilber Sabido, Chief Forest Officer
"The expectation is that with rains that we are expected over the weekend and in the coming weeks that that will have to dampen the fire and given that it's now exposed so the expectation is thought that if we do not have that system coming through then through the monitoring then we would need to make the ultimate decision of using the means of dousing with a helicopter."
And while the skeptics among figure that the geologists simply got to the mystery too late they say that the mystery is solved and the X-file of the sleeping giant is effectively closed.
Jules Vasquez:
"Did you detect any alien life?"
Wilber Sabido, Chief Forest Officer
"Not in any way."
