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[EN VIDÉO] 20 years of fires around the world summarized in 30 seconds This is what Earth looks like in the throes of flames. This is not an end-of-the-world scenario, but a summary of the magnitude of the fires that have occurred across the globe over the past two decades. Twenty years of forest fires, watched from very high by the Terra satellite, which NASA has condensed into a 30-second animation.
After the dramatic fires of 2017 which killed 64 people, the Portugal has become an example of firefighting for other European firefighters. Five years after the dramatic fires that killed 64 people in Pedrógão Grande, Portugal has decided to revolutionize its way of anticipating the risk of fire. Most of the victims perished in their cars trying to flee the disaster, when it was already too late. “Too late” indeed, that is why the government is prioritizing the prevention first of all. If the smell of eucalyptus is very pleasant in summer near the Portuguese forests, these trees are above all major sources of fires.
The very fast-growing eucalyptus should not be part of the country’s landscape: native to Australia, its wood is highly flammable. The leaves form an inflammable carpet when they fall, the same goes for its bark which comes off. eucalyptus oil is also responsible for the nickname of these trees in Australia: “petrol trees”.
A total overhaul of Portuguese nature
It is now forbidden to plant eucalyptus, and the government has invested in a total overhaul of the nature of central and northern Portugal. The idea is to make these lands less flammable. In this part of Europe, an estimated 30% moreover the number of possible forest fires by 2050, due to the global warming. Because if it is currently difficult to fight against the rise in temperatures and the drought, it is possible to make nature less sensitive to conflagration by choosing certain species, and to better prepare the population for this risk: this involves training municipalities at risk, with information provided to all inhabitants, such as the choice of evacuation routes. During the 2017 disaster, the victims had fled via a narrow road, the worst in the area, now nicknamed “the road of death”.
the Portugal has created a fire management agency (Agif) whose aim is to deal with the cause of the fires, and not only to fight those already underway. Rural areas are facing a growing problem: young people are leaving the countryside and abandoning their families’ farms, leaving spaces untended. Among the prevention proposed to maintain these areas at risk: systematically cut all the eucalyptus near the villages and replant local species, restore its place toagriculture in these deserted and therefore unsupervised regions, but also, to develop eco-grazing, in particular with goats and sheep on the land to be cleared, a quick and inexpensive concept. Preventive measures which are of particular interest to the south-west of France: the Landes forest is full of trees which are also very flammable, maritime pineswhich they too are not, at the base, endemic of this region.
This new fire management policy has attracted the attention of other countries very concerned, such as its European neighbors including France, but also California, South Africa and Australia. While many foreign firefighters come to train in Portugal, the country has been chosen to host the International Conference on Forest Fires in 2023.
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