Yesterday's aerial view of the Segarra fire.
03/07/2025
Periodista
2 min

If you would be so kind, please recover the interview that ARA published with firefighter Marc Castellnou on February 8, 2020, because they'll find this week's fire in Segarra explained. I advise the Government, the local councils, and the private sector to reread it. We were warned.

"These are climate change fires. Firestorms. There's no extinguishing capacity, and we have to do like the Australians: stand back and defend homes and people."

"We know this will happen in Catalonia. In Portugal, the forest equivalent of the entire province of Tarragona burned in seven hours. Imagine a fire like the one in Australia, which starts in El Papiol, with a westerly wind: in four hours it could be in Barcelona and have consumed all of Collserola in six or seven hours."

"What concerns us is the entire Pre-Pyrenees, from Noguera to La Garrotxa in the north, because it's the area where climate change is having the greatest impact."

"Catalonia is asymmetrical: it makes no sense to accumulate population on the coast and have them transport food, water, and energy, and have the interior depopulated, with fires that will run to the coast and bring down that economy. The landscape around which Catalonia was planned is no longer static. If wine, olive oil, and yams can't be exploited on the market, then oil and yams are very serious. And in countries without plans to address change, investment isn't made.

"We must create a landscape that can withstand tomorrow's climate. Do as the person who was planning to retire and has just been diagnosed with an illness. We have no right to let things not change, and we will have to be humble. The fortunate thing about our generation is that we have the ability to plan for the future. Is it very difficult? Yes, but we weigh up what it entails."

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