What the Ponent fire teaches us
In 2017, terrifying wildfires in Chile that burned nearly half a million hectares served to define a new type of forest fire: sixth-generation wildfires. These fires are characterized by their rapid spread and unpredictability, as they are capable of altering the surrounding weather conditions, making extinguishing them extremely difficult. One of these fires is affecting the regions of Ponent, specifically Noguera, Segarra, and Urgell, and at press time had burned nearly 6,000 hectares, mostly crops, and had caused two deaths.
Two farmers from Coscó, in Noguera, were trapped in the fire in their vehicle, and although they tried to take shelter under some rocks, they were unable to save their lives. A total of 20,000 people were forced into lockdown for several hours due to the danger posed by the situation. Firefighters state that, given the extreme conditions of the fire, the death toll could have been much worse. The blaze caused a phenomenon never before seen in Catalonia: a pyrocumulus cloud, a huge cloud of smoke and ash that rose up to 19 km high and was visible from halfway across the country. Winds of up to 125 km/h surged inside, making the flames among the fastest ever seen in Europe. The extremely high temperatures, in the midst of a heat wave, and the dryness of the crops did the rest. Fortunately, a rainstorm helped contain the blaze that was out of control.
Faced with this situation, and once the technical and human inability to stop the flames was confirmed, the firefighters opted to cordon off a large area and focused on protecting people and minimizing damage. However, this first major fire of the season, right at the beginning of summer, sends a very worrying message about what awaits us. The combination of climate change, with increasingly frequent episodes of drought and heat waves, and the abundance of forest cover due to abandoned crops is an explosive cocktail that threatens our territory.
From here, we need to see what can be done, apart from trying to minimize the factors that cause climate change. And here, two fronts appear on which the administration can influence. The first has to do with strengthening the emergency and fire services, which in Catalonia have historically demonstrated unquestionable excellence. In the current context, resources cannot be spared for people who risk their lives to fight fires.
Second, we must act on the territory to make it less vulnerable. The Generalitat (Catalan government) has already announced that it will promote mosaics of agricultural and forest land, that is, creating plots of crop or pasture within forested areas that can act as firebreaks in the event of a fire. Some city councils are already acting independently, for example in Roses, but now it would be necessary to do so at the national level.