Like someone watering a garden. 10,000 liters per minute at 42 meters away. The Valencian Community has a unique weapon to fight fire: fire cannons that are activated as soon as the environmental sensors detect the slightest outbreak of fire. And these sentinels are armored to entire neighborhoods.
In the Devesa The Salerin Valencia city and under red notice due to high temperatures, eight fixed towers have been set up on Gola del Pujol avenue and a set of portable cannons that move through the natural park. The municipal forecast is to reach about 40 towers in 2031. The system began in the Colonia Santa Marina urbanization (Carcaixent), where the Forest Fire Defense System (SIDEINFO) already installed similar cannons in 2006 for collective defense against a neighborhood surrounded by mountains.
Entrusted to Neptune. Guardian is the name of this project and it has no other purpose than to serve water cannons to create “green barriers” around key developments. The objective now is to expand in areas such as Masia de Traver, Els Pous, La Canyada (north and south) and Valencia La Vella.
In Torrent, for example, the Vedat has been protected for more than a decade by 24 cannons distributed throughout the “green lung” of the city, covering more than 50 hectares of forest. They are activated automatically or manually when the risk increases, and the city council itself is considering bringing this same methodology to Serra Perenxisa using hydrants and pipes on forest trails.
and it works. Already prevented a fire from spreading in the Túria Natural Park, dumping more than 218,000 liters of water in just over half an hour. Companies such as Hidraqua, Cetaqua, Medi XXI, along with the universities of Valencia are involved in this enormous project. In fact, Medi XXI also sells domestic and portable versions of these cannons for isolated homes and small urbanizations.
While other communities face the same wave of fires with extreme confinement, as is the case of the entire population of Albeldain Castillonroy, resorting to the essential ES-Alert warnings and massive deployments of brigades and UME, Valencia has found another less reactive model.
What is a fire cannon. It all starts with the SIDEINFO tower system. They are water monitors that measure between 12 and 16 meters high, shoot water about 42 meters away and mobilize almost double the discharge of a Canadair-type amphibious plane (about 6,000 liters at a time).
They are fixed cannons, connected to tanks of about 500 m³ and pumping houses, integrated into a home automation network with sensors and weather stations that allow simulating the evolution of a fire and activating the irrigation/reinforcement system when the risk index demands it. In addition to moving large flows of water, they can also project foam with a range greater than 30-40 meters and can vary between manual, motorized or remote control.
A difference between communities. The Valencian Community has become a testing laboratory. And the case of El Saler is quite unique: the city has been investing since 2023 in a system patented by the consulting firm Medi XXI GSA. The nucleus resides at that point where the CV-500 highway and the urban center intersect the forest. The engineer Ferran Dalmau argument that this system only makes sense at very specific points of the urban-forest interface, where opening large firebreaks would be unfeasible.
Such an evacuation would cause a huge landscape impact, because it would leave a mountain with a giant bald patch. Although not everyone thinks the same: WWF Remember that these sprinkler systems are anecdotal for now and they are not clear that they work against high intensity fires. Once again, early detection, cleaning of perimeter vegetation and neighborhood self-protection plans are essential preventive guidelines.
Protect yourself against maximum risk. In Valencia, where wind conditions can fan any spark, sometimes a fire overcomes the barriers of surveillance, forest management, mobile firefighting devices and, in short, the Special Plan against the Risk of Forest Fires (PEIF) itself. These cannons are, de facto, a reinforcement system.
During the last few weeks, tracks and roads have been closed to traffic, the device has been reinforced with a forest nursery, El Saler Fire Station, Local Police and Civil Protection volunteers. This year, the deployment has mobilized 4,401 troops and 20 air resources throughout the Community, with 2,313 professionals in the province of Valencia, 56 forest firefighting units and 65 observatoriesten of them with 24-hour surveillance. Only in El Saler has a reinforcement of five firefighters and two extra patrol teams been activated.
The Stop al Foc device of the Valencian Community brings together almost 1,700 professionals – 724 in the province of València, 470 in Castellón and 434 in Alicante – for a stage that, statistically, 68% is attributed to human activity (38% intentional, 30% due to negligence).
The Albelda case. Some are saved and others burn? The difference with Huesca is clear: fewer water options, more unpopulated areas of territory and environmental conditions more conducive to fire. The declared fire at 18:15 In agricultural and forestry land, it devastated 100 hectares in a few hours and forced the Government of Aragon to raise the PROCINFO plan to operational situation 2. They cut off the N-230 and A-140 roads and the Military Emergency Unit (UME) is already there. It is already controlled, luckily, but the entire Tamarite de Litera area is at risk and the figures point to more than 400 hectares burned.
All precautions are insufficient: the 2026 fire map is presented as the one with the highest incidence of forest fires in the EU. The Copernicus and FIRMS records speak of some 56,000 hectares burned, which represents almost 40% of the burned surface in the entire Union. The data from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition is somewhat lower (39,700 ha until June 21, you can consult here updated data), but they agree that June has been the most destructive month.
Doubling the numbers. What’s more, 19 fires have been recorded from July 2 alone until now, making 34 in total. It is already double that of the same period in 2025 and there have been 15 large forest fires (GIF) of more than 500 hectares so far this year. In the last week – from July 2 to today – 4,509 hectares have been charred, 500 more than a year ago. And Cantabria concentrates the greatest damage, with about 15,500 hectares burned.
If you want to consult the hotspots in real time and have notions about their radiative power (FRP), you can take a look at Incendiohoy.es and Google Maps itself. If the question is how to avoid forest fires, Valencia is clear: irrigate forests with enormous water cannons. They may seem like something from science fiction but they make all the sense in the world in view of the environmental urgency that concerns us.
Images | Medi XXI
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