Who Should Be Responsible for Forest Fires? Lessons From the Greek Experience1

Abstract

The organizations responsible for the functions of forest fire management are not the same in all countries. A variety of historical, political, social, environmental and financial reasons have resulted in a wide spectrum of forest fire management organization schemes. As fire problems, in the form of very bad fire seasons, are becoming all the time more pronounced and visible, there is often pressure for changes in the fire management structure in the affected countries, in one direction or another. Sometimes the demand for such changes is extreme, especially after major wildfire disasters. Obviously, this can lead to serious mistakes. In this paper the change in the organization of forest fire management that took place in 1998 in Greece is described in brief. The example is used to demonstrate the pitfalls and the problems and to document the need for objective criteria on how fire management should be organized in a country, given its own unique conditions.

Full text

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Who Should Be Responsible for Forest Fires?
Lessons From the Greek Experience1
Gavriil Xanthopoulos 2
Abstract
The organizations responsible for the functions of forest fire management are not the same in
all countries. A variety of historical, political, social, environmental and financial reasons
have resulted in a wide spectrum of forest fire management organization schemes. As fire
problems, in the form of very bad fire seasons, are becoming all the time more pronounced
and visible, there is often pressure for changes in the fire management structure in the affected
countries, in one direction or another. Sometimes the demand for such changes is extreme,
especially after major wildfire disasters. Obviously, this can lead to serious mistakes. In this
paper the change in the organization of forest fire management that took place in 1998 in
Greece is described in brief. The example is used to demonstrate the pitfalls and the problems
and to document the need for objective criteria on how fire management should be organized
in a country, given its own unique conditions.
Introduction
The organizations responsible for the functions of forest fire management, namely
prevention, presuppression planning, suppression and post-fire rehabilitation, are not
the same in all countries. A variety of historical, political, social, environmental and
financial reasons have resulted in a wide spectrum of forest fire management
organization schemes. As fire problems, in the form of very bad fire seasons, are
becoming all the time more pronounced and visible, there is often pressure for
changes in the fire management structure of the affected countries, in one direction or
another. Sometimes the demand for such changes is extreme, especially after major
wildfire disasters. Obviously, this can lead to serious mistakes, especially when new
policies, legislation and regulations are prepared in a hurry, by partially informed
politicians feeling the pressure of an outraged public and less-than perfectly informed
mass media.
The objective of this paper is to provide an insight into this problem that will be
useful when such decisions are being made. In order to do that, the paper draws from
theoretical knowledge, personal experience, and real world examples. More
specifically, the change in the organization of forest fire management that took place
in 1998 in Greece is described in brief. The example is used to demonstrate the
2 Research Forest Fire Scientist, National Agricultural Research Foundation, Institute of Mediterranean
Forest Ecosystems and Forest Products Technology, Terma Alkmanos, 11528, Athens, Greece.
1An abbreviated version of this paper was presented at the second international symposium on
re economics, policy, and planning: a global view, 19–22 April, Córdoba, Spain.

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pitfalls and the problems and to document the need for objective criteria on how fire
management should be organized in a country, given its own unique conditions.
Theoretical background
At a global scale, the prevailing perception when considering forest fires is that they
represent a natural disaster: A threat to the people and the environment, a destructive
force that must be subdued. At least, this is the picture drawn by the mass media, the
“truth” in the minds of people who live in the cities, the people who have property
and interests that may be destroyed by a forest fire. However, this is not the case in
the minds of the shepherd who starts a fire to stimulate new vegetation growth for his
animals or the farmer who burns the stubble in his field to clean it up and start a new
crop. Also, this has not been so in the traditional use of fire by the American Indians
or by many other cultures around the world that persisted for many centuries without
damaging the environment.
The negative perception, the fear about forest fires, was built to a large extent
with the development and maturing of Forestry as a scientific field: A development
that started in European countries, like Germany, where forests are timber rich, wood
production is very important, and fires have a small natural role.
It took many years of fire suppression in the USA, where absolute fire control in
the form of the “10 AM policy” was established shortly after the development of
forestry there, until problems such as fuel accumulation, steep increase in fire
potential, and forest succession pathway distortion, became evident. US forestry,
patterned after its European predecessor, considered fire a menace and tried to
suppress it at all costs. However, starting from the most fire prone ecosystems, such
as California, scientists soon started voicing their concern about the problems that
were developing. In the late 1960s and 1970s the voices became stronger and the
total fire exclusion policies were gradually revised. This was supported by numerous
studies on fire history and fire ecology, which demonstrated the natural role of fire in
many types of forest ecosystems. Prescribed burning gradually became a
management tool aiming among others to reduce fuel loads where they had
accumulated and to provide management solutions, such as better animal grazing
conditions, where needed.
The message soon spread around the world where scientists started being more
critical of total fire exclusion. It became common understanding that in those forest
ecosystems where the rate of live biomass accumulation through photosynthesis and
dead material build-up exceeds the rate of biomass breakdown by the slow
“oxidation” processes (molds, insects, bacteria) due to the environmental
characteristics, fire, which is a rapid oxidation process, is necessary to complete the
circle of life, release the nutrients and the growing space and reset the ecosystem to a
new start. Also, to many scientists it became evident that only if the excess biomass
production is removed by people through forest stand management or fuel
management, or by animals through grazing, the occurrence of fire can be reduced or
controlled in such fire dependent ecosystems.
In the 1980s and 1990s fire ecology in many ecosystems around the world was
studied in depth. Knowing the role of fire allows for better decisions in regard to fire
management policies. In theory, then, the knowledge and the tools were in place by
the 1990s for new fire management policies that would not be oblivious to the
importance of sound, fire-aware, forest management, and would include tools such as
prescribed burning.
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The current situation
Unfortunately, the idea of fire exclusion is established too deeply in the beliefs of
people around the world. Other than the scientists and probably many people who
live and work in the forest and in the agricultural fields, fire remains a source of fear,
a menace, for the mainstream of city dwellers, including most politicians. The
practice of prescribed burning has seen significant application in the US, but very
little in Southern Europe. Forest management has not been given the attention and
funding it needs, and in the last decade it has experienced shifts between ministries
(environment, agriculture, economy) and organizational scheme changes (from top-
down structures to regional or local breakdown of structures). Furthermore, when fire
disasters hit, as has been the case in many countries in the late 1990s and early 2000s,
the reflexes for blind suppression of the fear causing element (fire) are all too often
stimulated and societies seek “security”. In a world that is turning all the time more
towards strong (and costly) security forces, heavily armed and with high technology
in their support, the “solution” to stop the scare of forest fires is obvious to laymen’s
minds: more effective fire suppression. However, this one-dimensional approach is
far from complete or sound. The example of what happened in Greece in the last few
years, in regard to forest fires, is worth considering, to understand the issues involved
and the potential pitfalls.
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The Greek example
Greece is a European country occupying an area of 130,875 km2 in the southern tip of
the Balkan Peninsula. About 60% of this area (7.9 million ha) is characterized as
forest land. Tall forests constitute 2.5 million ha, of this land, the rest being evergreen
shrublands and partially forested areas (3.2 million ha) or degraded lands with low
vegetation of mostly thorny spiny shrubs (phrygana) (1.9 million ha). These
shrublands and grasslands are mainly used for grazing. Less than half of the tall
forests are timber producing forests, mainly growing at high elevations. The rest
consists of "low" or coppice forests that produce mostly fuelwood and of low
elevation pine forests (mainly Pinus halepensis and Pinus brutia) with little timber
producing but high aesthetic value. The climate over most of Greece is typically
Mediterranean, with relatively mild winters and a hot and dry summer period
(Xanthopoulos 2000a).
About 2/3 of all forest lands are state owned and are managed by the Greek
Forest Service (GFS) which is a state organization with a long history and very
important work in the past, especially in the post second world war era, when it
helped develop infrastructures such as roads and dams in the country, providing jobs
and resources to rural populations. Forest management and through that timber
production, was an important task of the GFS through the second half of the 20th
century. However, it was mostly centered in the mountainous areas, mainly of
northern Greece, were productive forests of true-fir (Abies sp.), spruce (Picea abies),
high-elevation pines (Pinus nigra and Pinus sylvestris), beech (Fagus sp.) and
deciduous oaks (Quercus sp.) grow. Low elevation pine forests were for the most part
out of scientific management as the funds needed for the task were never available. In
practice, there was a management scheme applied by resin collectors who cultivated
these forests, securing regeneration and protecting them.
The growth of tourism that started in the 1970s, a strong economic growth and
the improvement of living standards gradually drove young people away from
villages and from hard work in the forests. In the 1980s the country joined the
European Union. Subsidies to the resin producers were not among the policies of the
EU. The low elevation pine forests were practically abandoned.
In the same period, the demand for secondary homes in coastal areas for summer
vacations started growing. This trend continues today, and the same is true for the
development of urban-wildland interface zones in Attica (the region around Athens)
and certain other areas as people try to avoid crowded city centers. Planning for this
growth was very poor. Lack of a complete land cadastre was and still is a problem
contributing in this direction.
As low elevation forests were gradually left unmanaged and villages were
abandoned by young people, the number of forest fires and the yearly burned area
started growing steeply by the end of the 1970s. The GFS which had the task of
forest protection, started acquiring firefighting means in order to control forest fires.
The first specialized firetrucks were purchased around 1971 and the first Canadair
CL-215 amphibian waterbombers started operating in 1974. Forest protection from
fires and illegal land occupation gradually became the focus of most GFS offices in
southern Greece where these problems were more pronounced, while forest
management continued to be the main task in most offices of northern Greece.
In the 1980s the yearly burned area kept increasing, exceeding the 100,000 ha
mark twice (1985 and 1988) (Fig. 1). The need to improve the firefighting
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mechanism was obvious but actions in the 1980s were quite slow and funding was
limited. However, starting around 1993, the GFS started getting better organized for
fire suppression with only marginally higher funding, except for the addition of 200
four-wheel drive semitrucks for initial attack in its fleet. The local offices developed
presuppression plans, the coordination center in Athens was improved, helicopters
were introduced in fire suppression for the first time, and handcrews were trained and
transported by helicopters for initial attack. Soon there were marked signs of
improvement in fire statistics. Then, came the year 1998.
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Figure 1—Evolution of yearly burned area in Greece in the 1970-2003 period.
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The transfer of responsibility of forest fire suppression
The 1998 forest fire season in Greece was far from usual and certainly most
controversial due to a sudden decision by the Greek government to transfer the
responsibility of forest firefighting from the GFS to the Fire Service. The decision
was taken at the end of 1997 and it was mainly a political one. It was prompted by
what was considered poor results of the Forest Service in the previous years and did
not really consider in depth all the parameters of the undertaking. Actually, it lacked
any serious scientific justification or planning. During winter and spring of 1998
many voices warned about an oncoming disaster including a number of politicians,
Forest Service officers, many university professors, and the few forest fire experts in
the country who were not given any opportunity to offer their input (Xanthopoulos
1998).
The law about the transfer of responsibility to the Fire Service finally took effect
on May 25, 1998. That left very little time to the Fire Service to seriously prepare for
the challenge since the actual fire season starts by mid-June. At the same time, it was
evident that no provision had been made for cooperation between the personnel of the
Forest and the Fire Services at all levels. The Fire Service officers, who had been
contributing in the past to forest firefighting, mainly close to urban areas and most
often from paved roads, never having command on forest fire incidents, believed they
knew all they needed. The significant difference between wildfires and the other
types of fires they had been trained for (industrial, ship-fires, home-fires etc.) was not
obvious to them.
It took only the passage of a dry cold front on July 4, 1998, that was
accompanied by very strong winds (7 Beaufort scale) and the typical in such cases
wind shift, to demonstrate the inadequacy of the preparation of the Fire Service. The
front followed four days of lull, low humidity and extremely high temperatures which
had reached 44 degrees Celsius in many parts of the country including Athens. To the
surprise of the Fire Service, which did not have a fire danger prediction capability in
place, more than 100 fires erupted within an hour in various parts of the country.
More than 20,000 ha of forest lands burned on that day (Xanthopoulos 1999).
What followed was a preview of the rest of the fire season. Fire Service officers
quickly established a belief that all fires were part of a plan against them and against
the new law. Forestry people, on the other hand, insisted publicly that the Fire
Service was clearly inadequate. The mass media presented and often
over-emphasized this disagreement. Relations became very tense and good
cooperation between Forest and Fire Service personnel was rarely the case. Even at
that moment no corrective measures were taken.
The rest of that fire season was a disaster. The conditions were difficult but not
extreme, but the burned area nearly reached the previous all time high. There were
even some deaths, including three firefighters and a volunteer who were fighting a
forest fire in a box canyon on Ymettus mountain, just a few hundred meters from the
last houses of Athens, on July 17, 1998. They left their firetruck in a relatively safe
place, correctly parked, having more than 1.5 ton of water and fled uphill in the
canyon with the fire chasing them. They were soon overtaken by the fire and died in
the open while their truck remained practically intact. The signs of lack of training
and experience were quite clear.
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The 1999-2003 period
At the end of the fire season of 1998 the government decided to insist on its decision.
In the next years it offered heavy support to the Fire Service, including additional
permanent personnel, seasonal firefighters, more aerial means, increased funding and,
equally important, full political support. The number of Fire Service permanent
employees increased from 6,500 to about 11,000 persons, including approximately
2,000 firefighters transferred from the GFS. About 5,000 seasonal firefighters are
also employed through the summer. The number of firetrucks grew to more than
1,100. Ten (10) new Canadair CL-415 were added to the state owned aerial fleet of
14 CL-215s. Furthermore, the government allowed the Fire Service to contract
private helicopters (this was not permitted to the GFS earlier), and provided the
necessary funding to choose among the largest in the market. As an example, in
2003, the helicopter fleet for the summer included three (3) Erickson S-64
“AirCrane”, four (4) MIL MI-26, three (3) Kamov-32T, and one (1) MIL MI-14.
The total yearly costs of fire suppression more than tripled in five years. The
results were mixed: they were very good in the relatively easy fire seasons of 1999,
2001, 2002, and 2003 but in the summer of 2000 which was hot and dry the burned
area reached an all time high: >140,000 ha. This can be explained mainly by the
massive initial attack from the air that has become the basic principle of the Fire
Service operational procedure. Under “easy” conditions, all fires are stopped
immediately. However, when demand exceeds the capacity of aerial means, the
ground forces are not able to control fires effectively. Of course, training and
acquisition of experience gradually brings improvements in this field as well.
In the meantime, the GFS lost its political head, the General Secretariat of
Forests and Natural Environment, becoming a General Direction in the Ministry of
Agriculture. Furthermore, it was broken down into a region-based structure. The
regional offices now belong to the Ministry of “Interior, Public Administration and
Decentralization”. Funding declined, and although fire prevention still remained in
the responsibility of the GFS, very little can be done without the appropriate funds.
One example is the lack of needed funds to maintain the network of forest roads.
Another example, is abandonment of efforts to control forest fuel built-up, and even
abandonment of active forest management, except of the most productive forests. The
personnel of the GFS that was conditioned to a work overload during the summer,
now is able to relax and enjoy vacation time freely. Very few of them would be
interested to get involved again in forest fire suppression.
In the late 1990s a new political entity was created. It is the General Secretariat
for Civil Protection (GSCP). Its mission is to coordinate the organization efforts of
prevention, suppression and relief of all disasters, natural or technological. The
GSCP became really active since 2001. In the field of forest fires it has tried a lot to
bring the GFS and Fire Service to work together, for example for making common
presuppression plans at Prefecture level, and it has made some progress in this
respect. However, the Fire Service, with all the political support it has experienced,
does not generally try to cooperate with the other state organizations. It tries to do
everything by itself, even if this means duplicating means, efforts and costs.
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Pitfalls and problems
The Greek example illustrates a series of pitfalls and problems that are not unique in
such situations:
xThe decision for transferring the responsibility of firefighting was
clearly a political one. It was clearly one-sided, since it focused on
forest suppression only, and there was not any scientific justification for
it.
xThis resulted in a very strong disagreement and finally resentment on
the part of the personnel of the GFS. Much of their productive potential,
including specialized knowledge and experience has been wasted. This
is especially true for senior officers who had devoted a big part of their
life protecting the forests they were responsible for with poor means and
support.
xIt could be argued that the results of fire suppression in the last three
years are positive.
xHowever, this can also be challenged: The huge burned area in 1998 and
2000, which included many of the most vulnerable forests reducing the
overall fire potential, and the mild fire seasons that followed in
combination with the extreme strength of the aerial means, may be
falsely hiding inadequacies that will become evident in a difficult fire
season a few years from now.
xThe cost of firefighting has sky-rocketed. Even if the Fire Service has or
will become more effective in fire suppression than the GFS, this is
achieved at a very high cost. No-one will ever know how much more
successful the GFS could have been if it had received only part of the
political support and funding that the Fire Service has received.
xIt has been demonstrated in practice that the politicians understand very
little about forest management and fire prevention through that. Their
interest, and support, is devoted to “visible” aspects of forest fires such
as fire suppression and prevention campaigns through the mass media
aimed at the public. As soon as prevention responsibility was
disassociated from suppression, the latter got all the support and
funding.
xFire prevention has suffered as, in addition to lack of appropriate
funding, there is no political strength and no real mentality of fire
management within the GFS:
oNo effort to work on legislation or actions in support of resin
collectors, rural populations, regulation of grazing, rational
planning of new urban-wildland interfaces etc.
oNo thought about development of prescribed burning projects
for forest fuel control or for the development of practical and
realistic grazing schemes (in order to reduce shepherd caused
fires, and to prevent further grazing site deterioration).
oNo effort for dynamic forest management with principles that
incorporate considerations about fire.
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oOnly limited work on forest road and firebreak maintenance.
oOnly limited work on fuel reduction.
oLimited participation in the development of presuppression
plans.
xAs time passes since the deprivation of forest fire responsibility from
the GFS, the collective knowledge and mostly the experience of its
personnel on forest fires, is being lost. This is negative both in regard to
better fire-aware forest management in the future, as well as in regard to
introduction of prescribed burning.
Examples from other countries
Greece is not the only example of complications in regard to fire management
responsibilities in various countries. Actually, the examples of different
organizational schemes are as many as the fire prone countries around the world.
Others can present the situation in their own countries in much better detail, so it
will not be attempted here. However, it is worth noting that, as a general rule, in
countries where forest fires do not have a prominent role in shaping the forest
ecosystems, forest fire suppression responsibility lies with the Fire Service. Many
central and northern European countries belong to this category (Germany, United
Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden…). The same is true for Japan (Zorn and others 2002).
France is a special case, since the forests are not highly flammable except for the
southern part where the climate is Mediterranean. Since the mid-1980s, the Forest
authorities are responsible for prevention while fire suppression is in the hands of the
Civil Security. The latter is responsible for city fires and all other disasters as well.
Also, Portugal, for the most part, is not a true Mediterranean country. Its climate
is influenced by the Atlantic Ocean. Forest productivity is high over most of the
country. Much of the native pine forest there has been replaced by eucalypt
plantations, through private initiatives, increasing fire potential steeply. A centuries
old tradition of a volunteer Fire Service, has brought the responsibility of all
firefighting to the hands of this organization. The forestry authorities are mostly
responsible for prevention.
Sometimes differences exist even within countries. For example, Spain consists
of many regions, which are highly autonomous. The fire prevention and suppression
responsibility scheme varies a lot between them. In the highly flammable Andalucia
in the south, the forest authorities are responsible for fire suppression. In the less
flammable but more forest rich Catalonia in the north forest fire suppression
responsibility lies with the Fire Service. The province of Madrid, where urban areas
are many and the forests are not as flammable as in Andalucia, follows a mixed
model, where the forestry authorities are not completely disassociated from fire
suppression.
Forestry organizations, usually in cooperation with municipal fire brigades, are
responsible for fire suppression in most Mediterranean countries such as Israel
(Bonneh et al. 2004), Cyprus (Hadjikyriakou 2002), and Turkey, while Italy has a
complex system with many players, with a special forest firefighting organization
(Corpo Forestale) and a Civil Protection Directorate in Rome having key roles
(Fuschetti, 1976). In the USA, the National Interagency Incident Management
System (NIIMS) coordinates the pre-suppression and fire suppression actions of
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many federal land management agencies, the States and the municipal Fire Services
(Xanthopoulos 2000b).
In Canada and Russia, countries with vast expanses of forest and sparse
population, the forestry authorities carry the responsibility for forest fire control. On
the other hand, in most of Australia, volunteer organizations, such as the New South
Wales Rural Fire Service, handle all fire emergencies in an effort to cope with the
problem of achieving effective fire suppression in a large country that has areas of
extremely flammable vegetation but also has a relatively small tax-payer base.
The effectiveness of all the above schemes is quite variable. However, large
fires seem to be inevitable wherever fuel build-up occurs, forest management does
not cope with it and meteorological conditions bring fire danger to extreme
conditions. When lives and private properties also get affected forest fires may even
be characterized as major disasters. The fire season of 2003 was very difficult in the
south of Europe, from Portugal to Italy and Croatia. Independently of who is in
charge of firefighting, all these countries suffered great damages. Portugal, with its
forest management problems, and France with its wildland-urban interfaces, that
included tourist infrastructures, suffered most.
Of course, there are other reasons, such as social, political or economic, and
cases such as inadequate suppression capability of the firefighting organizations, that
lead to catastrophic fire seasons in some areas of the world. The Amazon basin in
Brazil and Indonesia are two such examples. In those cases, again, who is responsible
for fire suppression is not the major issue. Forest management that is beneficial for
the people, education and involvement of the public, and a basic firefighting
organization and infrastructure is the answer.
Criteria on how fire management should be organized
Given all the information above, it is needed to focus on the central question of this
paper: Who should be responsible for forest fires? The answer, in this author’s view,
is far from simple, but it is not difficult. It should be based on the realization of
certain general truths:
xOrganizations are made of people. They give value to the organizational
scheme. Forest fire suppression needs dedicated, skilled and knowledgeable
people. If a specific fire management scheme works, with its people and
resources, it is foolish to try to change it drastically. As the saying goes: “if it
ain’t broken don’t fix it”.
xIn certain environments the build-up of fuels makes it impossible to avoid
occasional catastrophic fires. Fire management must take this into
consideration, making long-term fire damage reduction one of its central
objectives.
xCopying fire management schemes, even successful ones, from one country
to another is not necessarily a good idea. Differences in environmental,
social, and economic conditions, educational level of people, sophistication
level of the society, etc. may lead to major failures. For example, GIS
systems in fire management are not the solution for countries where there is
little familiarity with computers in the workplace and there are no digital data
(such as DTM) available.
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xIn regard to fire suppression per se, any well prepared, organized, equipped,
funded and managed organization can do the job, once it acquires the
necessary knowledge and experience and becomes familiar with the terrain
and the conditions.
Having these truths in mind, the problem becomes one of achieving fire control
objectives (burned area reduction, fire losses reduction), in a cost effective way,
without compromising environmental concerns (Xanthopoulos 2004). The following
recommendations provide a basis for an initial assessment of the required action:
1. Avoid disturbing a system that works well in the long-term.
2. Examine if fire control successes of a recently (10-20 years) established
system can be maintained in the long-term. Fire history, fuel build-up
assessment, evolution of the number of fires per year, the total burned area,
the number of large fires occurrence and trends of firefighting costs are
variables that must be examined at a minimum. Take corrective action if
needed before problems become compounded.
3. If there is talk or pressure (political, popular) for changes consider points 1
and 2 above first. The level of success (or failure) of the current system must
not be judged independently of the current level of funding. Compare level of
funding in other countries with similar conditions.
4. If the indication is that changes may be needed, use the table below (Table 1)
to classify the type of environment in the country or region of interest
between the six “typical” types recognized. The recommendations for each of
these types will help guide the basic approach towards a new organizational
scheme.
5. Realize that from that point on it is a matter of study, brainstorming, good
planning, involvement of the right people and careful well planned steps in
order to establish the new scheme without serious turf battles, instability or
loss of potential resources.
Conclusions
In a world that changes in regard to its mentality, economics, technology, social
structure, and environment (including climate change), the question of “who should
be responsible for forest fires” may come-up in many countries around the world, as
it has come-up in Greece. The example of Greece was used here to illustrate some of
the pitfalls and potential problems. It should be studied carefully, and examples from
other countries should also be considered before a decision of how forest fire
suppression should be organized can be made. The question is not a simple one to
answer. There are specific criteria and conditions that must be taken seriously into
consideration. The recommendations provided here are not a panacea and do not
reach a deep level of analysis. However, they are a first attempt to provide a guide,
mainly for those trying to make political decisions with limited knowledge about the
realities of forest fires, that will help them realize the seriousness of their actions and
to take careful steps in the right direction.
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Table 1—Recommendations on who should be responsible for forest fire suppression for
various types of forest environment.
Type of
environ-
ment
Characteristics Recommendations
A High biomass production, high
decomposition rates, fuel build-up
slow, humidity generally high
(tropical and subtropical
environments). Forest floor biomass
low.
Fire suppression demand is low. It can be
handled by forestry administration,
municipal fire departments, or volunteers.
Cooperation between them is useful but
not critical.
B High biomass production, slow
biomass breakdown. Quick fuel
build-up. Highly flammable
vegetation, high natural fire
frequency (e.g. chaparral in
California, maquis and Pinus
halepensis forests in southern
Europe, Mediterranean dry
eucalypts in Australia).
Fire suppression demand is extreme. Fuel
management including prescribed burning
is essential but can only be carried out
over limited areas. Fire control is costly.
Cooperation of all organizations is
important in order to keep firefighting
costs at reasonable levels. A system like
NIIMS should be considered. Emphasis
must be given to good planning, e.g. of
wildland-urban areas in order to reduce
damages because of the occasional
uncontrollable fires.
C Medium biomass production rate,
biomass decomposition rate quite
good, humidity generally high, such
as in temperate deciduous forests,
usually at high elevations. Forest
floor biomass accumulation slow,
fire frequency low to medium, fire
intensities low to medium.
Fire suppression is not demanding. It can
be handled by forestry administration,
municipal fire departments, or volunteers.
Cooperation between them is useful but
not critical.
D Medium biomass production,
medium rates of decomposition
such as those in temperate
coniferous forests mostly at higher
elevations. Fuel accumulation on
the forest floor is slow but fuel
loads can become quite high. Low
natural fire frequency but extreme
fire behavior potential possible in
mature stands.
Over extended landscapes the potential
for occasional large wildfires exists. It is
not rational to maintain a huge fire
suppression mechanism. It is best to
emphasize good fire-aware forest
management in order to control fuel
accumulation. Then, either forest
authorities or municipal fire brigades can
control fires successfully. If fuel
accumulation has occurred, such as in
parts of the USA, significant resources
and good fire suppression capability is
needed.
E Low biomass production rate and
low rate of biomass decomposition,
such as in boreal coniferous forests.
Accumulated biomass on the forest
floor can reach very high levels.
Very low natural fire frequency,
because fuel build-up takes a long
time and conditions conducive to
fire are rare. Extreme fire behavior
potential is possible in mature
stands.
There is occasional need for large fire
suppression capability. Forest
management is needed where timber
production is economically viable.
Emphasis is needed on effective fire
detection and initial attack. Knowledge of
the terrain and the conditions is very
important. Municipal fire brigades are not
suited for such tasks and they are scarce
in such environments anyway. Use of the
forestry personnel for multiple functions
makes sense.
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F Fine fuels, grasslands, such as in
water limited environments (e.g.
savannah). Fuel loads are low, fire
frequency is high.
Limited fire suppression capability
needed. Fire is not destructive, except to
properties & livestock so planning is
needed. Initial attack with relatively light,
quickly mobilized resources is needed. It
can be handled by forestry administration,
municipal fire departments, or volunteers.
In many cases, the latter coordinated by
the authorities, are the best option.
Acknowledgments
This paper was prompted by and is based on work performed within the fire
suppression work-package of the EUFIRELAB research project which is funded by
the European Commission, DG Research, 5th Framework Programme (Contract
EVR1-CT-2002-40028).
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