Fire Away
We're in a long period of drought. This month of October has been abnormally warm. Everything is dry. Even though it drizzled a bit last month, the soil beneath the surface is dry as paper. Warnings about climate change have abounded for some years now. Yet Galicia has not changed its forestry policies.
At the beginning of every summer the regional government hires a certain number of firefighters, and in October their contract comes to an end and they go home. This past Thursday, despite fires raging in the provinces of Ourense and Lugo, five hundred firefighters were sent home at the end of their contracts.
At no point in time is anyone hired to clean out the enormous undergrowth in woods close to villages and towns. Local property owners have an obligation to do so, but it's not always feasible. Many are older folk who can't get out a scythe like they used to, nor a modern-day brush cutter. Younger folk may not have the time to do so, and there are some who don't even know where their plots are, it having been so many years since they were last there. Others have emigrated and might come back only every few years if at all. The undergrowth turns into overgrowth, and some bushes rival some trees for height. Light a match there, you have an inferno in .10 seconds.
These woods are usually tiny plots. Someone might have three or five wooded plots, but they're not together. Usually, they're far apart. One owner might have his plot nice and clean, but if it's surrounded by four or six plots that look like the Amazon jungle, it won't matter much. The regional government had pledged some years back to reorganize the properties, and put them together to make their upkeep easier. The reorganization would consist in seeing how much land you have scattered about, and give you one plot with the same amount in one place. It's difficult, but not impossible. With larger tracts of land, clearing out underbrush and keeping large swathes of woods clean is easier.
Apart from the tracts that are personal property, large patches of woods are communal property and belong to entire villages or parishes. The participants form governing structures and get together to vote on uses and expenses. Many such properties are rented out to forestry companies. It's easier for the villagers; the companies are in charge with all the minutiae of planting, cutting, selling, etc. The companies pay rents to the villagers, and sometimes benefits. The problem is that those companies are not in the business for the environment, but rather to make money. They plant entire hills with eucalyptus trees, a species that grows fast and straight, and brings a quick yield. Unfortunately, it's also a very inflammable species. Talk to an Australian. They'll explain how fast their native eucalyptus trees can burn. If the pine trees introduced in the twentieth century burned readily, eucalyptus burn like torches dipped in gasoline.
Who lights the fires that so plague Galicia and Portugal? Possibly each fire has a different reason. There are the nut jobs that love to see those red tongues licking up the green, and how their handiwork sets everyone's teeth on edge. There are the copy cats, like the ones that proliferated last night. In Santiago someone set the briars next to the train station alight. In A Coruña another similar fire. Perhaps the fire that began in Negreira was another copy cat.
Outside the nut jobs and copy cats, there is really little to go on. Certain laws prevent outright re-zoning of land that has burnt. Mafias to force down the price paid for wood? It doesn't make much sense, and after all these years no one has yet found the end of the thread to be able to pull and unravel this mystery. Yet, most fires in Galicia are coaxed into being by humans. When on a hillside there appear three or four plumes of smoke beginning to rise on a sunny day, with no lightning, no nearby roads, no nearby construction, no nearby houses, nothing nearby that might have handed over three or four sparks, that is an indication that a fire bug is out for a walk in the doomed woods.
Yesterday, some of the fires in the south of Galicia travelled over the border from Portugal. Portugal also has similar problems with forest fires, and these days the plague is passing north, ignoring the border. Some of those fires were then replicated in the south of the province of Pontevedra, one of the most densely populated areas in Galicia. The fires actually surrounded the city of Vigo, Galicia's largest, and cut off various roads, including highways and railways. The fire dipped its fingers into various different neighborhoods of Vigo, sending neighbors into frantic formation, passing pails of water and garden hoses. By this morning, over a hundred fires had been declared in Galicia, most of them in the south of Pontevedra, but many in other places. The fires in Lugo and Ourense, active all weekend, continued.
Four lives were lost yesterday in Galicia, but 31 in Portugal. Those who lit the fires will most likely never be caught. Instead of blaming the weather and the fires that won't stay south of the border, our regional president should make real decisions toward prevention. They should begin with hiring people to clean the hills surrounding the villages and towns of underbrush. They should continue by joining together the small plots to make it easier to keep them clean. They should finish by threatening, warning, cajoling, kissing the forestry management companies into changing the species they plant all over the place from fast growing incendiary eucalyptus, to local species like oak and chestnut. They've taken the easy path of putting out the fire for too long. Now they should start trying with prevention.
At the beginning of every summer the regional government hires a certain number of firefighters, and in October their contract comes to an end and they go home. This past Thursday, despite fires raging in the provinces of Ourense and Lugo, five hundred firefighters were sent home at the end of their contracts.
At no point in time is anyone hired to clean out the enormous undergrowth in woods close to villages and towns. Local property owners have an obligation to do so, but it's not always feasible. Many are older folk who can't get out a scythe like they used to, nor a modern-day brush cutter. Younger folk may not have the time to do so, and there are some who don't even know where their plots are, it having been so many years since they were last there. Others have emigrated and might come back only every few years if at all. The undergrowth turns into overgrowth, and some bushes rival some trees for height. Light a match there, you have an inferno in .10 seconds.
These woods are usually tiny plots. Someone might have three or five wooded plots, but they're not together. Usually, they're far apart. One owner might have his plot nice and clean, but if it's surrounded by four or six plots that look like the Amazon jungle, it won't matter much. The regional government had pledged some years back to reorganize the properties, and put them together to make their upkeep easier. The reorganization would consist in seeing how much land you have scattered about, and give you one plot with the same amount in one place. It's difficult, but not impossible. With larger tracts of land, clearing out underbrush and keeping large swathes of woods clean is easier.
Apart from the tracts that are personal property, large patches of woods are communal property and belong to entire villages or parishes. The participants form governing structures and get together to vote on uses and expenses. Many such properties are rented out to forestry companies. It's easier for the villagers; the companies are in charge with all the minutiae of planting, cutting, selling, etc. The companies pay rents to the villagers, and sometimes benefits. The problem is that those companies are not in the business for the environment, but rather to make money. They plant entire hills with eucalyptus trees, a species that grows fast and straight, and brings a quick yield. Unfortunately, it's also a very inflammable species. Talk to an Australian. They'll explain how fast their native eucalyptus trees can burn. If the pine trees introduced in the twentieth century burned readily, eucalyptus burn like torches dipped in gasoline.
Who lights the fires that so plague Galicia and Portugal? Possibly each fire has a different reason. There are the nut jobs that love to see those red tongues licking up the green, and how their handiwork sets everyone's teeth on edge. There are the copy cats, like the ones that proliferated last night. In Santiago someone set the briars next to the train station alight. In A Coruña another similar fire. Perhaps the fire that began in Negreira was another copy cat.
Outside the nut jobs and copy cats, there is really little to go on. Certain laws prevent outright re-zoning of land that has burnt. Mafias to force down the price paid for wood? It doesn't make much sense, and after all these years no one has yet found the end of the thread to be able to pull and unravel this mystery. Yet, most fires in Galicia are coaxed into being by humans. When on a hillside there appear three or four plumes of smoke beginning to rise on a sunny day, with no lightning, no nearby roads, no nearby construction, no nearby houses, nothing nearby that might have handed over three or four sparks, that is an indication that a fire bug is out for a walk in the doomed woods.
Four lives were lost yesterday in Galicia, but 31 in Portugal. Those who lit the fires will most likely never be caught. Instead of blaming the weather and the fires that won't stay south of the border, our regional president should make real decisions toward prevention. They should begin with hiring people to clean the hills surrounding the villages and towns of underbrush. They should continue by joining together the small plots to make it easier to keep them clean. They should finish by threatening, warning, cajoling, kissing the forestry management companies into changing the species they plant all over the place from fast growing incendiary eucalyptus, to local species like oak and chestnut. They've taken the easy path of putting out the fire for too long. Now they should start trying with prevention.
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