{"id":700,"date":"2019-02-21T11:26:49","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T11:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horizon.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=700"},"modified":"2019-02-21T11:26:49","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T11:26:49","slug":"it-eats-everything-the-new-breed-of-wildfire-thats-impossible-to-predict","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/700\/it-eats-everything-the-new-breed-of-wildfire-thats-impossible-to-predict\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It eats everything\u2019 \u2013 the new breed of wildfire that\u2019s impossible to predict"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Annette Ekin<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019re fighting a different kind of wildfire whose behaviour experts are struggling to predict.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Climate change and negligent forest management are causing higher-intensity, faster-moving fires that can generate enough\u00a0energy\u00a0to\u00a0evolve into\u00a0erratic\u00a0firestorms<\/a>, known as pyroCbs, in the face of which first responders can do little.<\/p>\n

\u2018Traditionally we could predict the fire behaviour and the direction of the fire but under those conditions and those moments it\u2019s not possible,\u2019\u00a0said Marc\u00a0Castellnou, president of the Spanish independent\u00a0wildfire prevention group Pau Costa Foundation.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0a wildland fire analyst\u00a0with the Catalan fire services,\u00a0Castellnou\u00a0reconstructs wildfires using\u00a0simulations, satellite, on-the-ground and other data.<\/p>\n

This wildfire shows a different behaviour than those of the past, he says.\u00a0‘It eats everything.\u2019<\/p>\n

While these fires are rare, when one strikes it can generate 100,000 kilowatts of energy per metre. In firefighting terms, this is 10 times what a firefighter can handle, but even at 4,000 kilowatts, firefighters cannot go near the flames and require aerial support.\u00a0\u2018The old way of fighting fires by sending firefighters \u2013 that\u2019s gone,\u2019 Castellnou said.<\/p>\n

New normal<\/strong><\/p>\n

There have been signs of trouble since the 1990s, according to Castellnou.<\/p>\n

\u2018This change has been cooking for a long time, but the first time we realised something wrong was happening were the years 2009 and 2012,\u2019\u00a0he\u00a0said, referring to the Black Saturday bushfires in\u00a0the Australian state of Victoria\u00a0that killed 173 people and wildfires in Spain, Portugal, Chile and California, US.\u00a0Many in the fire community initially thought these were just abnormal events, he says.<\/p>\n

But then wildfires in Chile and Portugal in 2017 indicated that those weren\u2019t simply extreme years. \u2018That was the new normal arriving. 2018 has confirmed that,\u2019 he said, referring to the deadly wildfires in Greece and in California.<\/p>\n

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‘The old way of fighting fires by sending firefighters \u2013 that\u2019s gone.’<\/p>\n

Marc\u00a0Castellnou, Pau Costa Foundation, Spain<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

On October 15, 2017, Castellnou was in central Portugal to conduct analysis then support the local services as the wildfires became firestorms.<\/p>\n

‘What I saw was the pace of the fires\u00a0… You think: \u201cWell that cannot be real.\u201d When you go there (and see the damage) you understand that that is the\u00a0reality,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

Castellnou, who spoke about the future of fighting wildfires at the\u00a0EU\u2019s security research event<\/a>\u00a0in December 2018, first joined the Catalan fire and rescue services\u00a0as a seasonal firefighter when he was a teenager. In the past, he says, a fire that\u00a0destroyed 25,000 hectares a day was\u00a0considered\u00a0extreme. According to his figures, the October fires in Portugal consumed 220,000 hectares of forest, an\u00a0area 22 times\u00a0the size of Lisbon and killed more than 40 people. Castellnou says that at their peak, wildfires burned at a rate of 10,000 hectares per hour over seven hours.<\/p>\n

\u2018This is something that blew my mind and I cannot use technology to simulate that because models can\u2019t predict it,\u2019 he said.\u00a0The challenge is now predicting how they will behave, he says.\u00a0\u2018We\u2019re still not there. We\u2019re struggling.\u2019<\/p>\n

Flammable<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wildfire experts say that climate change, causing a long-term rise in temperature and less rainfall, is creating unprecedented flammable conditions that are making forests burn with more intensity. Wildfires now occur in the wintertime and affect regions in latitudes beyond the fire season-prone countries of\u00a0Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal and France. Castellnou says that wildfires are expected to affect highly populated areas like\u00a0central Europe.<\/p>\n

\u2018Last summer, it was the first time in history we were having\u00a0wildfires<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0(nearly)\u00a0every single country in Europe,\u2019\u00a0he\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s not that climate change will create these new scenarios. No, no. The new scenario is already here, and it has come a lot faster than expected.\u2019<\/p>\n

According to experts, urbanisation and poor forest management for reducing fuel \u2013 the grasses and shrubs that fires feed on \u2013 are also to blame.<\/p>\n

David Caballero, who also spoke at the security research event, assesses the wildfire risks in populated areas, focusing on the\u00a0wildland-urban interface, where infrastructure and urban development intermingle with forests and other wildlands. He is contributing to\u00a0a\u00a0project called\u00a0Clarity<\/a>\u00a0that is working to join up different IT systems to protect cities and infrastructures\u00a0from the effects of\u00a0climate change.<\/p>\n

He says we\u2019re seeing more fast-growing, high-energy fires affecting populated areas.<\/p>\n

\u2018We have to be prepared. Whenever we have forest in Europe, we eventually will have forest fires,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

He\u00a0travelled to\u00a0the\u00a0seaside\u00a0village of Mati, Greece,\u00a0in\u00a0the immediate aftermath\u00a0of Europe\u2019s\u00a0deadliest wildfires last year which killed\u00a099 people<\/a>\u00a0in the region of Attica.\u00a0Speaking to firefighters and survivors, he learnt that many people did not expect the fires to cross the highway that runs parallel to the coast. In the past the fires had halted at this point, but this time they leapt across, burning through Mati.<\/p>\n

\u2018There was an enormous amount of fuel due to the lack of management for 40 years,\u2019 he said. The fires tore through the village and reached the coast in just 20 minutes.<\/p>\n

Caballero says that all along the Mediterranean coast, unregulated construction with little regard for safety and evacuation routes and lax\u00a0vegetation\u00a0management mean that more places are at risk. He says local and regional authorities can no longer afford to be negligent. \u2018We are living surrounded by fuel,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

Culture of risk<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pau Costa Foundation, established to speed up the sharing of information and know-how between fire services and society, works on a number of prevention campaigns. For a project called\u00a0Heimdall<\/a>, set up to contribute to an EU-wide information system about fires and other emergencies, the foundation is ensuring that the general public has a voice in shaping it.<\/p>\n

One of the foundation\u2019s aims is to change the social perception of wildfires. A tendency to fight every fire, small or large, has let landscapes thrive artificially, Castellnou says. \u2018Not all fire is bad,\u2019 he said. By clearing old trees, fires can make way for the growth of new forests that are adapted to climate change.<\/p>\n

Smaller fires,\u00a0through activities such as prescribed burning,\u00a0also have a role to play in creating\u00a0scars in the land\u00a0which\u00a0break up a bigger fire\u2019s path.\u00a0\u2018A mosaic of landscape of different ages and low-intensity fires is the best protection against the big fires,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

Oriol Vilalta, director of\u00a0the foundation\u00a0and a volunteer firefighter,\u00a0says with wildfires killing more people in Europe, causing more than 200 deaths in the past three years, it\u2019s time we learnt how to coexist with them.<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u00a0need to create a culture of risk.\u00a0The Japanese know very well what to do\u00a0in case of an earthquake, but we don\u2019t know what to do in Europe with fires,\u2019 Vilalta said.<\/p>\n

In the past, the\u00a0tendency was to evacuate people, but\u00a0the general public must become\u00a0part of the solution through self-protection, he says. \u2018(That\u2019s) what to do and what not to do, where to stay and where not to stay in case of a fire.\u2019<\/p>\n

The research projects in this article\u00a0are funded by the EU. If you liked this article, please consider sharing it on social media.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Annette Ekin We\u2019re fighting a different kind of wildfire whose behaviour experts are struggling to predict. Climate change and negligent forest management are causing higher-intensity, faster-moving fires that can generate enough\u00a0energy\u00a0to\u00a0evolve into\u00a0erratic\u00a0firestorms, known as pyroCbs, in the face of which first responders can do little. \u2018Traditionally we could predict the fire behaviour and the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":701,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[126,4,79,24,28],"class_list":["post-700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earth-energy-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-environment","tag-research","tag-science","tag-technology"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018It eats everything\u2019 \u2013 the new breed of wildfire that\u2019s impossible to predict - Horizon Magazine Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/700\/it-eats-everything-the-new-breed-of-wildfire-thats-impossible-to-predict\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018It eats everything\u2019 \u2013 the new breed of wildfire that\u2019s impossible to predict\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Annette Ekin We\u2019re fighting a different kind of wildfire whose behaviour experts are struggling to predict. 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