Marc Castellnou: "It's reckless to have Collserola in the middle of the largest urban conurbation."

ReusMarc Castellnou, chief inspector of the Forestry Action Reinforcement Group (GRAF) of the Generalitat Fire Brigade, is surely one of the greatest fire experts in Catalonia and the world. He is attending to the ARA at the 112 center in Reus, after a July with many and increasingly violent fires and before an August that is also expected to be complicated.

Which areas are of most concern now?

— You have the entire Noguera strip up to Terra Alta, which is highly accessible. You have the entire Ebro Valley very overheated. We've had good rainfall in the Llobregat Valley and Ter Valley areas. If it rains again these days, they'll be out of the season. Now, they're different seasons. This one is dominated by the heavy rainfall in spring and the general scalding of vegetation in June. Normally, people think of harsh seasons as drought seasons. It's a much more complex dynamic of fire-atmosphere interaction, because the atmospheres are warmer and have a much greater capacity to generate pyroconvection.

When the firefighters said the blaze was beyond their capacity to extinguish, what was it like at times in Guissona?

— That the fire has enough energy to make your direct attack impossible. If the radiation emitted by a fire exceeds a threshold of 10,000 kilowatts per linear meter of frontage, the firefighter will suffer skin burns. This is the threshold for human survival. The average for forest fires in Catalonia should be around 4,800 kilowatts per meter. The reality is that this group of more extreme fires averages 9,200 kilowatts per meter. Do firefighters need more extinguishing resources? Yes, but above all, they need a managed landscape.

Where to start?

— I'm a firefighter, not a politician or a territorial planner. It's a matter of everyone paying for it. In the end, we must accept that this country will burn, and that these fires will sweep away everything in front of them if we don't take action. In other words, you have an antibiotic. We can't control the fires until the atmosphere has begun to change.

70% of the property is private.

— Is there private extinction in Catalonia, yes or no? So, to implement extinction, we must take charge of it publicly. It's a national problem. All apartments and houses in that country are private. But they all must comply with regulations. Everyone in that country is provided with medical care. It's a legislative issue. It's a matter for the country to decide whether or not to invest in this.

What to do with the scattered houses?

— The fact that you have a territory that was previously discontinuous and is now continuous, and in addition, within this continuity, you have a scattered population that must be protected, divides extinction resources. It's not a sustainable model. The country has allowed territorial structures, counting on the fact that the extinction system could protect it. But climate change has shown that we won't be able to protect it.

And what to do with Collserola?

— Collserola is the forested area in the middle of the country's largest urban conurbation. A fire in Collserola will cause a major civil protection problem. The lack of awareness as a country is enormous when, in the middle of the largest urban conurbation, you allow a small possibility of one of the country's largest fires, which would affect a huge population. Collserola has begun to prevent fires. It's a process that will take decades, but it has already begun.

Are there new ways to attack fire?

— There's no new development when it comes to extinguishing a fire. What exists is the ability to know what the fire wants to do and how it wants to do it. This means you need new physics models. The two-dimensional physics of fire, which has worked until now, has started to fail. We're now moving towards three-dimensional physics. But it's a chaotic process and very difficult to model. The problem is that simulating a fire that you can't do anything about is of little use. Operational capacity will improve if you have that territory better managed.

Where exactly should we walk?

— We need mature forest structures, and we need a diversity of forest structures. We need open spaces, and they can be agricultural, pasture, or other.

What have fires like the one in Guissona taught you?

— We sensorized and measured it as much as we could, and now we're replicating it and training our algorithms. These sixth-generation fires are rare, and being able to learn is important. One of the things we did was to place many sensors inside the plume to be able to adjust the supercomputer. This will provide much greater confidence in decision-making. And, above all, the important thing is that you'll be able to determine how many times a year this can happen in an area. It's a mad race against atmospheric change. And this June, obviously, has left us all frozen. No atmospheric model predicted we'd have a June five degrees above average. As firefighters, we're sold out; we need tools. And the "put out the fire and risk your life" system is not an alternative.

What should we do with controlled creams?

— Controlled fertilization is a management tool used to create a mosaic. Controlled fertilization, pasture, or forest management are equivalent. The big problem is that as a country, we must accept that we need a mosaic. And we still have an urban society that says the forest is untouched. I want to preserve biodiversity, and if this means touching 4% of the forest, I will. What I can't do is lose 100% because I've come to believe this couldn't happen. You can't delegate responsibility for the future to the response capacity of people who are already at their limit and who tell you they're at their limit. We manage territory because otherwise, we won't get ahead.

The risks of mowing and agricultural activities have also been discussed.

— House fires are caused by the people living in the houses. Industrial fires are caused by industrial activity. Agricultural fires are caused by agricultural activity. What we cannot do is penalize farmers. What we cannot do is engage in demagoguery in a country where only 2% of the population is farmers and 100% of the land is covered.

Are firefighters short on personnel and resources?

— The fire department needs to keep its resources up to date, which is costly, and needs to have its personnel renewed and expanded. We're in a good place now. The force is sized to respond to emergencies within the normal range, but not to respond to extreme ones.