THIRD & FOURTH DAY – “Dalla parte del fuoco”, techno-fighting and new inventions

This post is not actually going to be about the third day of my Sardegnian experience because I spent it on holiday; I had a wonderful beach day in La Caletta’s beach and a wonderful party night in a great concert. That’s not interesting for you, so I will speak about Dr. Delogu’s recently released book (“Dalla parte del fuoco”) and about how CFVA (by the hand of Dr. Delogu and some others) has implemented the use of forecasts, software, mapping and many new-tech tools.

“Dalla parte del fuoco” is written employing technical language, regarding complex terms, but in an easy-to-understand way. I mean, by reading it you’ll be able to relate many of those theories we know by the hand of famous scientists (Prof. Domingo M. Molina, Dr. Juli G. Pausas, Prof. Vittorio Leone, Ronald L. Myers, Jon Keeley, Prof. Leda Kobziar et al.) to Sardegna’s environment. You will understand how all that stuff is developing in Sardegnian ecosystems.

Another thing that makes it worthwhile is that Dr. Delogu includes many quotes of many of those papers I referred on the previous paragraph: he tells you what they said and how is it happening in Sardegna. That is amazing because it allows you both to remember the theory and to improve your knowledge (by applying it to different realities –forestry environments). Moreover, the book is perfectly structured: either you are used to fire stuff (at this level) or not, Dr. Delogu will guide you chapter by chapter, so as you are able to understand every single word he writes. That’s great, for the reason that each of us we’re specialized in different things (there are only a few who know perfectly everything).

Finally, format is also very good; it is easy to read, with nice letter and many charts, diagrams and pictures useful to better understand information. Language, Italian, is not a problem (at least for Spanish readers); absolutely understandable. And it prices the ridiculous amount of 16EUR, which nothing is compared with the great time you are going to have by reading it.

You can order it right here:

http://www.ibs.it/code/9788864291499/delogu-giuseppe-m/dalla-parte-del.html

I am still on sixth chapter so there are still over a hundred pages to go; but I want to share with you some quotes from the book that I’ve particularly liked and enjoyed.

Quote 1: <<[author is referring to GAUF] Si tratta di unità speciali recentemente istituite per l’attacco indiretto all’incendio con l’uso del fuoco di soppressione (fuoco tattico e controfuoco), per la preparazione di fuochi prescritti finalizzati alla prevenzione dei grandi incendi di interfaccia, per l’analisi degli incendi storici al fine di “apprendere lezioni” ed evitari errori di tattica che purtroppo in tanto occasioni sono stati causa di gravi incidenti>>

Well, I don’t know what to say. Amazing, wonderful, impressive, great… I mean, those units, born in 2008, are kind of the compendium of all good managing practices in one tactical team: PRESCRIBED FIRE as a prevention tool and as an ecosystem management tool, HIGH RELIABILITY ORGANIZATIONS’ principles, TECHNOLOGY applications and both FIRE ANALYSIS and FIRE as a suppression tool. Awesome! And, believe me, I saw those units working and they’re great.

Quote 2: <<Per evitarne gli effetti più devastanti occorrerà adottare, nella gestione forestale, tutte le azioni e le strategie necessarie non allo spegnimento delle fiamme ma soprattutto alla prevenzione, avviando il bosco alla “resilienza”>>.

He hit the spot! That’s what we all know (if not, we should); I think he is sending a message to some old-fashioned guys.

That is what I call ‘Forestry’s future formula’ (F³ by Merenciano):

Click to enlarge

Quote 3: <<Cosa direste se qualcuno vi chiedesse di partecipare ad una campagna di opinione segnata dallo slogan ‘Tutti uniti contro l’acqua!’ oppure ‘Tutti insieme contro la neve!’ per sensibilizzare i cittadini sul pericolo di alluvioni o di valanghe?>>

 

Please, guess what Dr. Delogu is speaking about in that paragraph. It is probably the greatest foresters’ mistake: those days on which (sadly many foresters still think like those days) we all used to use ‘fire’ to refer to a BAD thing, and only a bad one. Nowadays, we know there are GOOD fires and bad ones. In fact, look this amazing sticker I brought with me from the USA:

 

Quote 4: <<Prevale l’idea –tutta mediate dalla politica e dal luogo commune –che la soluzione agli incendi di interfaccia sia una robusta azione militare di soccorso pubblico e non invece l’ordinaria e virtuosa buona gestione dei luoghi in cui viviamo>>

Quote 5: <<[every single word written in the fifth chapter]>>

Fifth chapter is just amazing, awesome, incredible, impressive, wonderful, delightful, brilliant, splendid, extraordinary, remarkable… I would like to know more synonyms: it is just great! And I am not going to tell you anything about it, except for the title: “Ecologia del fuoco: un paradosso?”. You’ll have to read it.

There it is, “Dalla parte del fuoco” by Dr. Giuseppe Mariano Delogu; it is worth every single minute.

After that I would like to tell you how CFVA has implemented new technologies in its firefighting system. That is a complex matter so I will only make a brief resume regarding the two most interesting tools I know they use.

First of all, it is obvious that they employ local digital cartography, GPS, Kestrels and all that stuff. Moreover they (at least GAUF crew) check every single day (during the wildfire seasson), maybe three or four times, weather forecasts. As Giuseppe Delogu showed me, these are the main webpages they check:

http://www.sardegna-clima.it/ ; http://www.meteogiornale.it/ ; http://www.sar.sardegna.it/

Let’s review Wildfire Analyst and both LANDSAT and NDVI cartography.

1) Wildfire Analyst (http://wildfireanalyst.com/)

CFVA bought a few licenses for that amazing software. I don’t really know its true potential because I haven’t had the opportunity to use it with its main developer, Dr. Joaquín Ramírez – Technosylva (http://technosylva.com/). Hope I take some WA lessons soon (hopefully in CA).

Basically, the tool provides a fast on-scene fire analysis. If you are used to the software, you are able to introduce few parameters and simulate how fire is going to behave. Actually, you can get analysis showing spread and behavior, including fire paths and Campbell System analysis.

One of the greatest things is that you can adjust simulations, once run, by changing some parameters/data you’re observing on-scene and you’ve realized are not represented on the simulation. All that happens as fast as you’re able to do it, because it’s a very fast software. Moreover, I have to say that it is really easy to conduce simulations. In fact, e. g. you can download automatically weather data from a data source (that makes it worth, because introducing weather data –such as wind- in other simulators –for example FARSITE- is a slow process.

Of course it is also a prevention tool. And I love this. You can simulate either historical wildfires or likely-to-happen ones in order to manage the forest where it is really needed –it is time to save money and time, to do critical points management instead of huge fire breaks and all that stuff, isn’t it?-. Also you can simulate how a prescribed burn it’s going to behave.

Another amazing thing about Wildfire Analyst is the kind of results it provides and the way they are shown. Besides the typical charts/pictures… it automatically export data to Google Earth so as you are able to watch the simulation in 3D in an up-to-day cartography, absolutely versatile, handy, useful and easily share the results. It is great to improve situational awareness and to focus on what’s really important: an efficient management of the incident/forest policy. It also generates a complete simulation report, including source data, incident data…

As you can imagine, the employ of this tool makes system much more efficient, allowing incident commander to emphasize suppression efforts where they are really need, improving his/her incident awareness and making him/her able to forecast how will fire behave in a wide range of suppositions (as much as you are able to simulate by varying parameters).

Dr. Delogu running a simulation - Picture courtesy of Leandro Usai

Cheking simulation's accuracy - Picture courtesy of Leandro Usai

2) LANDSAT images and Image Analysis window for ArcGIS 10.1

As the US Geological Service describes on its webpage: “Landsat represents the world’s longest continuously acquired collection of space-based moderate-resolution land remote sensing data. Four decades of imagery provides a unique resource for those who work in agriculture, geology, forestry, regional planning, education, mapping, and global change research. Landsat images are also invaluable for emergency response and disaster relief”.

Now, since May 30, 2013, Landsat 8 satellite’s images are available. It is an awesome free tool, which allow us, foresters, to both better manage ecosystems (aerial view incomparably increases situational awareness) and emergencies. It is ideal both for planning tactics and for doing the post-incident work.

You just have got to visit the project’s webpage: http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov , identify your area of interest, ask for the desired maps and get the results in the format you want. By combining this images with the GIS tool ArcGIS, and employing the tool Image Analysis window, you’ll be able to generate those interesting NDVI maps (Normalized Differential Vegetation Index).

Those are the resulting maps (courtesy of Giuseppe M. Delogu):

This comment by Dr. Delogu is good to better understand the process: <<[...] l'elaborazione è una sommaria azione di classificazione delle bande del rosso e dell'infrarosso vicino del Landsat 8; può essere fatta anche su base regionale; si tratta di applicare un indice di calcolo di questo tipo: R-NIR/R+NIR, dove R è la banda del rosso, NIR è l'infrarosso vicino>>.

After that, I would like to share with you our next day’s activities. There we go!

On August 4, 2013 we (Dr. Delogu and me) visited CFVA Regional Station at Nuoro. It was such a great idea because there I met Livio Peluffo a GAUF crew member. He is kind of the perfect firefighter: strong, agile, open-minded, smart and with a fast-processing brain (so fast!). He is able to make decisions really fast, always keeping a total situational awareness about all the area of the incident he’s managing.

I had the opportunity to make a couple of backfires with him and other guys from his crew, and that was so exciting. Minute-to-minute tactics (because fire behaviour was continuously changing) which allow us to control fire as much as possible. Very nice experience (that was on Laconi Fire – I will tell you about that fire in future posts).

Besides his amazing firefighting skills, he is a great designer (I think he studied Design Engineering or something similar). Actually, he designed GAUF first-response vehicles, which are really well-prepared. I love its setup.

That day I had the chance to witness the ‘release’ of his new invention: a foam spear (retardant) adapted to be attached to one of his previous inventions, the improved version of the atomizer. So, a firefighter carrying an atomizer (which is a rigid backpack, 18 liters volume, with an engine propelling water, air or both) full of retardant foam could spread it, e. g. all over a line to secure it in order to safely conduce a backfire –in a few seconds. The new spear is attached to the regular hose (Fire Engine) and a plastic pipe to the atomizer. In that way, and because of Venturi effect, once water is driven through the spear, foam is absorbed and pushed too.

The invention is still in the process of patent, so you’ll have to wait a few months to watch the video I recorded while testing it. I am sorry.

We spent the rest of the day visiting the basi elicotterische di Farcana which is also the Region COP. That is a great idea because the resources and the managers are together, ready-to-go; even one COP Officer could embark on the helicopter fast to evaluate with his/her own eyes the incident.

Let me share with you the rest of the day by showing some pictures:

 See you soon!

SECOND DAY – Understanding ‘how, why and where’ wildfires in Sardegna

It is eight o’clock on the morning and Giuseppe wakes me up. At that moment began the first of seven days of almost twelve hours of work –as I will tell later, in other post, the two last days we worked longer than twelve hours.

In resume, that day we went to Villasalto’s helicopter station, we visited a forest Dr. Delogu used to manage –also in there we saw some antique graves (I cannot remember the exact age, maybe either Romanic or Nuragic) and an old strategic emplacement which was exploited in different eras to melt lead and as a military base-, we drove to a small wildfire and we finally spent some time visiting a WUI wildfire which occurred some weeks ago (I think it was on July 24^th). That’s it; see you in the next post!

…

I am just kidding. Let’s review all those interesting events one by one!

The day started as normally: we drove to Dr. Delogu’s office, he spent some time signing many documents and I hung out by checking out his stuff, haha. Nice office, with a nice Officer uniform, many patches and official coats of arms. I love all that stuff!

As I told before, Giuseppe is kind of a human encyclopedia, so during the drives he was all the time explaining me some Sardegnian stuff. Precisely, that day’s lesson was about old wildfires. 

There are so many wildfires in Sardegna, it is incredible. Most of them are small ones, but some others are really big (even over 7,000ha) –keep in mind were speaking about an island of 2,409,000ha. That means that it is hard to drive over the island and don’t find a couple of them. Well, somehow Giuseppe knows everything about every single wildfire. I said, e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g: incident’s day, time, and weather, local patterns, incident’s day concerns, size, crews involved in the suppression, main vegetation species, typology of soils, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. This is amazing, because it allowed me to both review in my mind many fire lessons and to learn interesting things. It is important to say that now, once returned, I feel more professional; it was worth every minute. I am very happy.

Here you have some pictures of one those wildfires:

We also had time to visit the greatest European radio-telescope. Both radio-telescope and surroundings are impressive, isn’t them?

Once in Villasalto Station I meet the crew, the pilot (pilota, Roberta, whom I later realized is a really good one), and the mechanic. One interesting difference between Sardegna’s helicopter service and ours is that they don’t have our ‘heli-transportated’ brigades (for example, in Aragón, we have that 9+1 or 6+1, with a Technic). They usually transport three GAUF members to the incident, who descend and evaluate it, while helicopter supports with water. It is another approach, also interesting, because deployed crew is well prepared, trained and able to make important decisions. It is actually the same approach: hot-spots, but with different methods, certifications and abilities. Days later I realized that the tactic is very good.

If you look only to GAUF’s procedures (CFVA), you understand that they are so good:  fast, efficient, strong, and smart and they really know their jurisdiction’s environment (I mean ecology, topography, local weather patterns, concerns, populations…). Even though the entire managing net is not the best (as I reviewed in the previous post), CFVA do an excellent job. Congratulations guys, you are absolutely an elite team. I am sure it is only a matter of time; the system will change and doubtless you’ll lead it.

Before departing to our next step, Villasalto’s crew offered us some delicious Italian dishes:

 

So tasty! Thank you very much!

The next stop was the forest which Giuseppe used to manage (I think maybe ten or fourteen years ago). We checked out his last actuation: a Pine reforestation (Pinus halepensis?). Unfortunately, and because of different complications, it didn’t work! Some of them survived, but the mass is not well developed, with many gaps. That’s it guys! Forestry is a hard matter, it is not easy to make all perfect – there are so many unpredictable factors. But we are scientists, so we use our own mistakes to improve, and we are never ashamed of them. We cannot control everything; it is Gaia who does.

There is a worse thing about this issue: all the surroundings are now un-managed by Ente Foreste della Sardegna. Guess what’s happening there… There is a big forest which was reforested with both Pinus and Quercus. Pinus is good in the first stages (as a pioneer) because it provides the few shadow Quercus needs and improves its growing; in that way they would be able to reintroducing those missing Quercus. Once Quercus is established, too much shadow is bad stuff: the new generations will need free space on the ground and light. Also they were so much old Pinus, which should have been cut years ago. But that shouldn’t be a problem; If you manage your forest you just have to cut some of those big Pinus, burn the plot –to eliminate remaining wooden debris- and enjoy your well-structured forest, instead of an unstructured mass, which will badly grow and poorly develop the system.

 

Close to that place were the antique graves and the old military & lead melting emplacement I told you before.

I think this is the perfect moment to introduce Sardegna’s history. I am not an expert, but with the help of Wikipedia (and some other Internet sources) and after having got along eight days with Dr. Delogu, I think I can make a resume.

Sardegna has had many different civilizations on his lands; starting from prehistoric megalithic civilization, Nuragics, Phoenicians, and Carthaginians, through Romans, Goths, Byzantines and Moors, and ending on Aragoneses, Austrian and (on 1861) Italians. In my opinion, the most important were Nuraghics, Romans and, of course, Aragoneses.

Nuragic manifestation was from XVI Century BC to IX Century BC. They are well known because of their amazing buildings, called nurages, which consist in kind of stone citadels with a very peculiar shape. They have many towers, some of them orientated to the four cardinal points. We had the time to visit a couple of them and believe me: they were amazing architects. Impressive structures still conserved, with impeccably straight-cut basaltic stones.

 

When that civilization declined, many others profited of their damaged constructions to build their own villages (as you can see in the pictures above, there are many ancient houses erected with basaltic stones coming from the nurages). After them, Sardegna was populated by Phoenicians and Carthaginian. Romans arrived later; they settled down as a result of the Carthaginians’ defeat in the first Punic War.

Roman domination was from 238 BC to 456 AC. They defeated Carthaginian civilization and invaded the island. Main changes were improvements in coastal villages and the foundation of Turris, Lybissonis and Feronia. Central and interior population resisted to the domination.

Now I make a jump to the end of XIII Century AC. On that era, the Pope Bonifacio VIII was having some troubles with French invaders. He found a solution: “If you, Jaime II, King of Aragón, help me with those French, I will give you Sardegna as a gift”. That was what happened and on 1324 Sardgena became a part of the Greatest, Amazing, and Lovely Kingdom of Aragón (it is true that all of that started years before, in 1297 when the Pope establish for the first the Kingdom of Sardegna. After many years of wars, the Kingdom of Aragón conquered the two Real Cities, and war finished. But it started a powerful resistance; Sardegna was kind of the Vietnam to Aragón). We, the strong, tall, handsome, brave, smart and efficient Aragoneses, dominated the island until XVIII Century AC with a feudal system. 

 

Source: Wikipedia - Cerdeña

After that, the island was owned by Austria and then, once governed by Amadeo II de Saboya, it finally became Italian. And here we are! Nowadays, the 24090-square-kilometers-sized island has over 1,665,000 inhabitants. The Region Capitol is Cagliari (160,000 inhabitants).

Wow! That wasn’t easy for my English. I apologize for the mistakes and the grammatical incorrectness.

As a curiosity –and I guess most of you have already realized that-, the Flag of Sardegna is the same that the third quarter of the Coat of Arms of Aragón, called “Cruz de Alcoraz”.  The “Cruz de Alcoraz” consists on the “Cruz de San Jorge” and four moors’ heads; is a symbol representing the hypothetical help San Jorge gave to the Iberians during the Reconquista, exactly during the “Batalla de Alcoraz” (in the vicinity of the current Huesca).

Returning to the main subject, on the contemporary Era, once visited that reforestation I was telling you about, we received a call about a wildfire close to San Nicolò d’Arcidano. We drove to there and found that it was already suppressed. I think it started in a public forest (southeast from the city) and spread to the West, burning a private cereal field. Wildfire was fought by crews from Ente Foreste della Sardegna, Associazioni di Voluntariato and CFVA.

Next step: Pistis. I think that day we drove over 300km (actually, in my opinion during the whole exchange we drove close to 1,500km; awesome). Pistis is a coastal town in the West side of the island. Is an excellent wildland-urban interface emplacement; and with “excellent” I mean: bad stuff (but not the worst, because as I’ll tell you in another post, I found what I think is the worst wildland-urban interface area in the world). Fire initiated in an eastern position (take as reference Pistis) and spread to the west burning some fields and lower hills. In those moments CFVA tried to stop it conducting a backfire which resulted impractical because of the fire behaviour and time factors. Concerned by wildfire’s spread direction (head was facing Pistis), CFVA and other crews moved to that village and established there the Commandment point. While some crews tried to put it out before it arrive to the town, a wind shift occurred and wildfire started to spread south. Ettore Deiana and some other CFVA members executed some backfires near to the closest buildings and avoided bigger disasters. As usual with strong fire behaviours, fire stopped once arrived to a natural barrier: the sea. Obviously, suppression tactics were a fundamental help in that process.

As you can see in the pictures below, many houses had fire in their gardens. That’s for the kind of gardens they have: full of flammable vegetation. They weren’t resilient houses. That is a serious issue in Sardegna (and in many other countries like Spain and the United States of America).

Wildlan-urban interface matter is going worse and worse; even though every day we now more about wildland fires and its concerns (the destructive power of bad fires), people seem to be unaware about it. We need to change our minds; we cannot support those jungle-gardens (I mean houses with higher risk of being burned than needed), because owners risk not only their houses, but their neighbors’ as well.

Also, if we want to make our houses resilient, we have got to do it properly: with the appropriated tools and when wildfire risk is low. Please, check out this advertising edited by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal FIRE - CDF) on 2006:

Are you doing the right thing on a wrong way?

Well, I think that was all folks! It was such an efficient day, with many lessons and funny times. I would like to have more days like that in my regular working schedule.

Thank you for following and please, keep on touch until the next post (which will be released earlier than this one; sorry, I was on holiday).

Best regards!