prescribed fires

As a firefighter which job place is in a fire station is very difficult to know what is happenning in our Firefighter System.

Information arrives in little notices in our intranet. All what is happening is not important to us, may think the people that chooses what can be transmitted to us and what not.

Certainly, the kind of things that arrive to our account are varied. We can find a job offer to technician or administrative, and the most of times, we can't access to these. All information is posted in our internal comunications system and it can be seen by all people than are allowed in firefighter's computer system.

And then, why we can't read information about prescribed fires? Why we can't find notices about planification of prescribed areas? I know that I, as a simple firefighter, can't assist to these fires, but why I can't receive information about them?

Paradoxically, in my fire station a GRAF cell has their base. All Winter and Spring they have a lot of activities. All days they are burning and arrive before the sunset. Then, after to clean the material and a comforting shower, they are ready to be in stand by and availables to work with us, unless there is a hazard situation. They are tired, and easyly need some time of rest. We can deduce they have work strong, but we don't know the 3 W: what, where, why.

But really, what are they doing? Something as easy and as difficult as prescribed fires.

Why is difficult? Because "normal" firefighters (els pobrebombers) don't know what they are. Then, how do you want the common people accepts fire as a forest management tool?

Prescribed fire is an important and interesting tool to manage risk, to reduce ignition capacity and potencial of burn in a wild forest. In many parts of the Iberian peninsule, there are some causes that have interfered with the natural ecosystem of forest: Reduction of grazing animals, Reduction of wood consumption,  low profitability of the forest as a business... These and others have created a different forest than 50 years ago. Forest is bigger and denser, with more combustible (more mass, more trees, more died specimens), more stressed (more competence between trees and wild bushes, ...)

Prescribed fire try to repair these social changes. The theory tells us that fire may eliminate thin combustibles, over forest floor. This fire can affect the weak and small trees, reducing forest density and promoting the strong trees...

Within 50 years we will see if this is correct or is another wrong action. We need a change of point of view, forest can not be a wild space (during too years poople has believed wood could not be interfered, and all trees were good, and due to wildfires extension of forest was decreasing). And now we (workers of fire extinction) know all of this is false. There are more trees and forest than last 200 years and fire risk is a continuous stain from the Atlantic ocean to the Mediterranean sea.

Why a firefighter can not know the prescribed fires policy and activities promoted by other firefighters?

 

If we want that people understand that fire is a good tool, all firefighters have to know prescribed fires policy...  

You can learn about prescribed fires nearly in The 2017 World Conference on Natural Resource Modeling will be organised by the Resource Modeling Association and the Pau Costa Foundation in Barcelona, on the 6-9 June 2017.