As I type the fire at Venta del Moro, on the border between Valencia and Cuenca provinces, is just about under control. A fire in Spain is classified as big when it burns more than 500 hectares. Venta del Moro left 1,300 hectares in ashes. A few weeks ago the Sierra de la Culebra in the North east of Zamora province burned 30,000 hectares.
Firefighters classify these forest and grass fires into generations. The sort we've had around here, so far, have been First Generation. This means there is some grass or some trees to burn so the fire can run through this fuel until it reaches a fire break or until it is stopped; 1st Generation have extension. Even these relatively small fires can kill; I'm sure you remember that someone was killed out at Rodriguillo last year. Second Generation fires add speed to their characteristics; extension and speed. Third Generation add intensity; extension, speed and intensity. Fourth Generation is used to designate fires which threaten a built up area. By Fifth Generation we're onto fires that have extension, speed and intensity and they are also multi focus. Last year Spain had a series of Sixth Generation fires. These burn so intensely that they produce their own climate; basically they produce deadly and unstoppable firestorms.
Each and every year forest fires are big news in Spain. Over the past few years some of the bigger ones seem to have been more ferocious than ever. Apparently, worldwide the number is on the increase. Think Canada, Bolivia, Sweden, Indonesia, Australia, Portugal, the USA. The question is why are there more and more fires?
Experts reckon that one of the causes, stand ready to be shocked, is Global Warming. Back in 2007 our then President, Mariano Rajoy, said there was no such thing as climate change because his cousin, a university professor, said it didn't exist. Rajoy believes in Global Warming now. I don't think Donald Trump does. Apparently the forests are stressed, weakened, because they have been in an unusually warm environment for so long. They may be drier so when they do go on fire they burn more easily and put up less of a fight against their natural enemy. This means that 6th Generation fires can burn ten times as quickly as the 5th Generation ones. 6th Gen can devour 10 kilometres of forest in an hour, that's 5,000 hectares in a day.
Another reason, in Spain, is that Spaniards live on the coast and Madrid. Fewer and fewer people live in the countryside. Forests which used to be worked, land where people used to collect the brushwood for their home hearths, land where farmers routinely cleaned firebreaks, land where the natural patterns of agriculture with walls and terraces and fallow fields and different crops from plot to plot and clean tracks all produced natural firebreaks or at least ground that could be turned into a defensive position when the time came to fight. Around our house there used to be goats for instance. When the goatherd became too old nobody wanted to spend their days walking with goats. It was old fashioned. Nowadays our local goats don't wander and graze and fart in the open air. They are kept in a shed and fed on industrial feed. Our roadside verges and fields were mown naturally. Not any more. The field across from us was traditionally ploughed and planted. Now it just grows very flammable grass.
Spain has a lot of fire fighting kit, more than the majority of countries. An article I read said there were over 500,000 firefighting units including a lot of fire fighting aircraft. This is why so many fires don't spread. If this first barrier fails though, especially if the fire has fuel and time to develop into one of the Sixth Generation superfires, it doesn't matter how many tenders and pumps and firefighters there are because the only reason those fires go out is because they run out of fuel. Traditionally the "forest brigades", the firefighters who deal with these big fires are recruited for the hotter months, the summer months when, logically enough, there are more fires. Now, with climate change, the fires start earlier in the year and finish later. But the firefighters are not being employed for longer. The consensus is that the firefighters should be doing what the goats and farmers used to do in the months when they are less likely to be needed to fight fires. Cleaning the countryside to make it less flammable. As an aside cleaning the land in the hot summer months means that the firefighters might start tired when they are faced with a real fire. The problem, as always, is, who pays? Prevention may make good sense but the money spent is going into something that doesn't happen. This temporary employment pattern or the forest brigades also means that seasoned firefighters can't live from their "part time" jobs. They find other work and, if that work turns into a permanent job away from firefighting then so be it.
Another difficulty is that the firefighting contingency plans have not been updated to take account of these new circumstances. When the Sierra de Culebra burned it had the bad grace to start before, what everyone in Spain recognises as, the start of summer, July 1st. That's when the temporary firefighters jobs start. Only 40% of the firefighters contracted for the "fire season" were ready to go. But good planning might be a bit deeper than just employing the firefighters for longer. People leave the countryside usually for work. Planning which helped keep people in rural areas might mean that the natural firebreaks of cultivated land were back in place, planning that subsidised old style livestock farming instead of intensive mega farms might leave sheep and goats to clean up for us. Odd to think that installing decent Wi-Fi and mobile phone networks might help to control forest and grass fires.
And the last reason for fires. Us of course. We flick fag ends out of car windows without thinking. We have a barbecue that sets fire to some grass that gets out of control. We dump glass bottles from our picnics without a thought and then of course there are people who do it on purpose because if they set this or that piece of land on fire they can later push for the once rural land to be built on.
Careful with that axe, Eugene!
