Feature: Huge wildfire leaves Syrian farmers homeless

"It was like doomsday, I saw the effort of 40 years being eaten by a blazing fire with my own eyes. I felt completely helpless in front of those mighty flames, higher than the trees and wider than the skyline," said Adnan Abu-Shamer, who lost his 30 acres farmland to a huge, unforgiving fire.

Shamer is one of 5,000 residents of the village of Jub al-Bustan, one of 35 villages which were swept away by a huge fire, the first of its kind and scale to hit the mountainous farmlands in the countryside of the central province of Homs over the weekend.

"In the span of four to five hours, wildfire filled the skyline. We were suffocating and took shelter inside our houses for fear of burning," the 65-year-old man told Xinhua, with a frown upon his old face as every line and wrinkle spoke of that horrific experience.

"This fire left us homeless," he said.

The fire, whose cause is still unknown, broke out Friday in the town of Sheen and spread through 2,400 acres of green mountains with the high speed of the wind within a few hours, afflicting thousands of people with unbelievable disasters.

For farmers, their losses are more than financial. They say years of efforts were lost and it will take many years for the lands to recover.

Their lands are all they have, and the harvest season at the end of each year was their feast and a time when they got paid for effort exerted during the year-long tillage.

Entire harvests of olive, apple and grapes perished and farmers said the fire-hit farmlands and woods need 20 years to recover.

Blackened, soot-stricken swathes of evergreen land has replaced the previous eye-catching and soul-refreshing view.

Mixed feelings of resentment, surrender and defiance have overwhelmed villagers in Jub al-Bustan, the most affected of the villages.

Part of their anger was directed towards the government. They said the response to the huge fire was meagre due to the poor ability of the Homs authorities in facing similar catastrophes.

Wasim Awdi, another farmer from Jub al-Bustan, said he lost 2,200 olive trees and 700 grape clusters to the raging fires.

"The 40-year efforts of my father and grandfather are gone," he said in anger.

Awdi, whose family is the largest in the village, said villagers tried to keep women and children safe from the fire, which, fortunately didn't kill anyone and didn't cause considerable damage to the houses.

He said when their lands turned black, the electricity went out along with the water.

"The fire attacked us and we couldn't control it. There was no controlling it. It besieged houses in the village and we moved women and children to safe areas for protection," he said.

He said the flames rose to eight meters, forcing some of them to climb upon the rooftops and douse buckets of water onto the smoldering fire.

Awdi said the trees that burnt date back to 1994, adding that cultivating the land needs a lot of money, which farmers cannot afford. He urged the government for compensation, either financially to cultivate the land or by providing them with seeds and young trees to plant.

The villagers said investigations are still ongoing to determine the cause of the fire, the first of its kind to ever hit the farmlands of Homs and Syria.

Some speculated it was due to the high heatwave which hit the country, whereas others quietly murmured the possibility of a terrorist act secretly carried out by suspected sleeper cells in the town of Sheen.

Villagers in general, specifically those in the Homs countryside and the coast, either work on their farmlands or join the army, especially as most villages in the area belong to minority groups supporting the government who feel vulnerable after the progress made by ultra-radical jihadi groups. Enditem