Spain faces a crisis for which it is difficult to find precedents. The fires have always been present in our summers, but this year it could be thought that their voracity would have caught us off guard. Fire extinction teams have often had problems supplying in their work in the fight against fire.
And it is not for less, the situation has been extreme and, in part, the fault is in the very nature of these fires.
The magnitude of a crisis. The most recent data indicate that fires this year have already devastated plus 340,000 hectaresthe worst data in several decades. The fires They have cost life to several people, eight according to more recent databut they have also caused injuries and have forced thousands of people to move to safer areas.
According to data from the emergency management system of the European Terrestrial Observation Program Copernicus (Copernicus ems), this summer the fires have devastated with a much greater area than usual in Spain, approximately 6.5 times the average of previous years. Another fact that allows us to illustrate the seriousness of the problem is that of the almost six million tons Carbon dioxide (CO2) that these fires have released the atmosphere only in Spain, a figure that almost doubles the records of previous years and multiplies the previous average several times.
Sixth generation. The voracity of some of the fires we have seen responds to its nature as fires called “Sixth Generation”. In this type of fire the fire reaches an intensity so that it alters the circulation of air in its environment, it generates important convective movements and even pyrocumuli, “clouds of fire”. All this makes the displacement of fast and unpredictable fire, making it difficult to control and extinction.
Not all the fires that are currently produced are of this type, but the current conditions favor the appearance of this type of fires. An extreme heat wave as lived in recent weeks, added to the presence of abundant fuel matter, is the broth of Ideal culture for appearance Fifth and sixth generation fires, the most dangerous we catalog.
“After a spring as wet as this year in which the vegetation has grown a lot, now we find an extreme heat situation, strong winds and a lot of time (in some cases several months) without rain,” explained to Science Media Center Cristina Santín Nuño, Head of the Department of Biodiversity and Global Change of the Mixed Institute of Biodiversity Research (University of Oviedo-CSIC). “We have all the ingredients for the ‘Molotov cocktail’ that we are seeing right now not only in Spain.”
Prevent, better than turns off. Experts agree that our resources when fighting this type of fires are very limited due to their extreme intensity. Often the tools we have to fight fire lacks utility due to the enormous accumulation of energy in these fires, which implies the need to wait and focus on preventing the situation from getting worse.
“We cannot forget that, in many cases, when the fires are very large, fast and intense, they cannot be fully controlled by many means of extinction that are dedicated to them. In principle, it seems that the current heat wave will begin to refer in a couple of days, so that could give a truce,” Santín Nuño added.
In A recent interview In the newspaper The worldPaco Castañares, who was the General Director of the Environment The Board of Extremadura in the early 90s, also emphasized the impossibility of fighting these events. The reason is that the fires of this magnitude “reach temperatures of 1,200 degrees Celsius in their pirocumulus.” As if this were not enough, it is “fires that have neither head or fronts because they come and go from one place to another,” he added.
Not only the voracity of fires. The lack of means when facing fires has been one of the great debates during this fire cycle. The impossibility of fighting this type of fire can make us fall into a false sense of inevitability, but the truth is that the means of extinction are more necessary than ever for several reasons.
The first and most obvious is that not all forest fires we are seeing get into an inextinguishable phase: the fires of lower generations are manageable and require the work of the troops destined to the fight against fire. In Spain There are still numerous active fireseach with own characteristics and intensity.
Secondly, it must be remembered that sixth generation fires are not inextinguishable from beginning to end although they can be in its intermediate stages. Getting control a fire before acquiring characteristics that make it indomitable is a way to prevent the worst consequences of these events. In addition, after this peak of intensity, the fire refers facilitating its extinction. Finding this moment and taking advantage of it requires these media.
Beyond the border of fire. To this is added the importance of having means beyond the limits of the fire, both in space; to protect vulnerable places before the arrival of the flames; And in time, out of the fire season. Regarding the latter case, the present fires have revealed the need to take care of the rural environment Also during winter.
The key is also in how the means destined to protect people and the fire environment are distributed. According to Castañares himself explained“Above all, the media have to be inside the people protecting people, with them, it didn’t.”
Image | Copernicus / Ministry for Ecological Transition
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