Current Situation Map, Europe Forest Fire Information System
Homeowners and fire managers in northern Europe are paying attention to wildfire risk during IAWF’s first Global Wildfire Awareness Week — in part due to a drying trend that has increased wildfire danger, as shown in this Current Situation map from the European Forest Fire Information Centre.
In the Scottish Highlands, with firefighters responding to initial attack fires, the local fire manager urges community members to “Prepare a Battle Plan” so that landowners are better prepared for wildfire and to assist firefighters:
The Highlands and islands fire service has urged landowners to draw up a battle plan for fighting wildfires, after several major blazes in the region…. (Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service area manager David Gill) urged landowners to establish wildfire strategy groups to ensure that proper arrangements could be quickly put into place if a fire occured on their land.
The upcoming issue of Wildfire Magazine will feature a cover story on wildfire response in Great Britain. In the March/April issue, an article on wildfires in Italy, “On the Right Track” (republished here in WildfireWorld), reported on Italy’s strategic planning response after a devastating 2007 wildfire season.
Another Wildfire magazine article – “Welcome to the Flip Side” –examined Europe’s cross-border and integrated fire management program, Fire Paradox. The author, Francisco Manuel Cardoso Castro Rego, observes that…
Fire long has been an important subject of debate, stemming from the apparent contradiction between its controlled use in everyday life and its threats to life and property as uncontrolled wildfires. This paradox has been phrased very well as, “Fire is a bad master but a good servant.” This dichotomy is a key issue for the European project known as Fire Paradox.
Greece , too, is facing the challenges of managing wildfire, as noted in this Community Profile. As Dr. Gavriil Xanthopoulos notes:
Wildfires constitute a major problem in the country as in all other Mediterranean countries of Europe. The fire season starts from May, peaks in July and August and continues until the end of October….Prevention efforts should focus on the fires starting in the summer under adverse fire weather conditions. Although the number of fires changes relatively little from year to year, the yearly burned area tremendously as a result of the overall weather-influenced difficulty of the fire season.
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