This week in Catalonia there has been a preview of what is feared might happen in the forests during the long and torrid summer that awaits us, and only a glimpse of what they might become, in a future that is already here, the forest fires in the new climate reality. In a dry environment and in the middle of a heat wave scattered fires have been activated throughout the territory simultaneously, a circumstance that notably complicates its control and extinction. The first wave of fires this year is influenced by chronic causes that are part of the environmental emergency that we are experiencing, although they are not a direct consequence of global warming, such as the progressive and constant depopulation of rural areas, the substitution of crops and pastures for continuous forest mass and the abandonment of the exploitation and sustainable management of these forests. But in what there is a direct and immediate relationship is between the fires, the reduction in rainfall so far this year and the intense heat wave that we are suffering and that has never reached such high temperatures at this time of year, with summer still to come. If we add to this typically summer natural phenomena such as dry storms, with electrical equipment and changing winds (until now, the most reliable hypotheses of fires correspond to lightning), we are facing a situation that the ‘conseller’ of the Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena, has described as “extreme”.
With the season barely started, the Generalitat’s fire-extinguishing device has already been seen in the situation of give up extinguishing active fronts to attend to more pressing emergencies, such as those that threatened urban centers or large forest masses. Let go a fire like the one in the Noguera (a strategy that, on a much larger scale, until recently we looked at with surprise in the great fires unleashed in environments as different as California or Australia) because at most it will only burn 5,000 hectares (twice as many as burned during the entire summer happened in Catalonia) to focus on another with a much greater destructive potential, which could affect up to 50,000, shows to what extent the rules of the game are changing and the risk is already extreme.
Necessary “prioritize and use strategic intelligence”, in the words of the ‘conseller’. But also to evaluate if the means of extinction are adequate in a new context. In this sense, it is good news that the collaboration in the Artesa fire of the Army’s Military Emergency Unit (UME) has been assumed normally and quietly. It is to be feared that it will be necessary again, as well as potentially international collaboration, and it would be nice not to repeat the opportunistic controversies of other years. Especially in the face of the reality of insufficient means and personnel, at least in cases in which there is simultaneity of fires, which is evidenced by having had to resort (without being sufficient) to the so-called M2 phase, in which all the troops must go to the fire stations. During the next two or three months, those responsible for fighting fires will unfortunately find themselves in situations in which they will have to establish an order of priorities that is not always difficult to explain, and they will have to demand once again the collaboration and responsibility of the citizens. That will be the urgency. But they must also reflect on what major changes in the management of our environment and in fire fighting strategies we must address.