If someone had written a story about how, one fine day, somebody started a fire so big that its smoke covered an entire city, it would have been considered fantastical literature. As of late, reality has exceeded fiction on so many levels in this town.
Over the past week, Buenos Aires has disappeared into a massive cloud of smoke. Whether you are in the northern part of the city, at the other end or one hour south of the capital, you can’t get away from it. The smoke diffuses all figures and forms, and seeps into buildings, rooms and clothes. Daylight has turned into a bleary white sun that weakly shines through a haze of indefinite gray. It seems like sundown all day, whether its 10am or 2pm. Eyes burn, it is difficult to breathe at times and everyone smells like they’ve been sitting next to a barbecue for hours. People on the streets walk through this cloud as if emerging from the surroundings of a blazing fire–and they are, except that the fire (actually 297 of them) is raging more than one hour north of the city center.
Activity as been drastically altered across the city. For several hours during the past days, the national routes entering the city have been closed to due null visibility, the domestic airport was shut down, the main bus terminal has ceased operations several times, the port was shut down and even one of the subway lines had to close due to the amount of smoke in the underground tunnels.
Despite all of it, life continues almost as usual. People here are accustomed to crises of all forms and natures. And so we head out into a perpetual fog each morning with our to-do list as long as it was the day before–only now we carry a handkerchief and eye drops in our bags.
Check out this funky youtube video (posted by fabianese7) with pics of the city edited to “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” by the Platters. [It looks like this video has been taken down from youtube.com. I'm searching for a new one.] Unfortunately, the video posted below has been taken off the web.
(left: a photo of the El Faro towers in Puerto Madero, from diariosic.es;
right: a view of the Planetario in Palermo, from comunidad.laprovincia.es)
