FIRST DAY – The approach to Sardegna and CFVA

I just crossed the arrival doors at Cagliari’s airport and saw Dr. Giuseppe Delogu. This experience was starting! There we go!

First of all, it is important to say that, even though the days before I had read much stuff about Sardegna, I didn’t know many things about it. I mainly knew about the time on which Sardegna was a part of Aragón Kingdom. Therefore I was ready to learn as much as possible about Sardegna. I actually didn’t expect such an amazing knowledge about the island as that one shown by Dr. Delogu.

We just left the airport and he was telling me about the wharfs on the East side, the old salt business and its relationship with Sardegna’s development. Moreover, he gave me a master lesson on sociology, which was very important to me (I understood the environmental and forestry politics’ day-to-day issues). He told me about main laws, statutes, typical social behaviours and many other interesting things. I came across with a human-encyclopedia. Awesome! He knows everything related to Sardegna in terms of ecology, edaphology, geology, geography, forestry, sociology, economy, politics and of course history. Doubtless: that was going to be a learning experience!

Most of the trip back to home he told me about the main species on the island –in terms of vegetation. I understood the kind of ecosystem on which we were going to work for eight days and started to think about how wildfire manages it. Keep in mind that the main forest manager is wildland fire, instead of prescribed fire or another kind of management. Despite of the efforts Dr. Delogu and other colleagues are doing, there are so many old-fashioned Chiefs in the Commandment crew who are not keen on use fire as a tool. We will review this trouble later.

Returning to the vegetation, you can find a good variety of trees, shrubs and grasses, all of them within the Mediterranean ecosystem standards. Pine species such as Pinus pinaster, Pinus radiata (which was introduced on an attempt to maximize paper industries) Pinus halepensis and Pinus pinea are in many of Sardegna’s forest. Either Quercus suber or Quercus ilex are a good choice to most of the island’s soils, being the first one probably the most frequent. If you like oil, don’t worry, Olea europaea it is in many places, conforming great hill landscapes which will cheer you up in the saddest day. You’ll also find Ceratonia siliqua, Arbutus unedo and some others. On the shrubs stratus you’ll primarily find Cistus monspeliensis, Juniperus phoenicea, Pistacia lentiscus, Rosmarinus officinalis, and some other aromatic plants. Grasses and pasture are typical Mediterranean ones, with an important percentage of Graminea’s family. Another common species are Opuntia ficus-indica, Rhamnus alaternus, Celtis australis, Crataegus monogina, and in general, all the species conforming the typical Mediterranean maquia.

That evening we joined the GAUF crew at Monserrato Station. Corpo Forestale e di Vigilanza Ambientalle della Regione Sardegna (CFVA) has many divisions; including teams with aims from wildland firefighting to judicial police. I think (but I am not really sure) they are organized in seven regions; each of them has a certain number of Stations. All the net within a region is coordinated by the “COP” (Coordination Center, located in the main city of the region) and all the COPs are synchronized by the Central Commandment Office, located in Cagliari (SORI: Sala Operativa Regionale Integrata or SOPU: Sala Operativa Unificata Permanente).

GAUF, meaning Gruppo di Analisi e Uso del Fuoco (Fire analysis and use team) –also, in sardo language Mastros de fogu- is the elite of the firefighting teams. They are trained to use fire to fight wildfires. In “Dalla parte del fuoco”, Dr. Delogu describes GAUF in this way:

<<Si tratta di unità speciali recentemente institute -2008- 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 evitare errori di tattica che purtroppo in tante occasioni sono stati causa di gravi incidenti>>.

Furthermore, as a part of their training, they execute some prescribed burns during the year. I would like to say that they use them to manage ecosystems, to improve forest and guide them to the natural status, on which fire is a natural element and not a threat, but I cannot. Why? Let’s try to figure it out! (I advance that it is not because of their wishes).

Unfortunately, procedures in Sardegna’s emergency management service are not strongly designed. There are so many agencies involved on environmental management –which is not essentially a bad thing- but there is no coordination. There is not neither a common objective, nor a common commanding system nor a common way of thinking. Every single agency steps in a different direction, disturbing each other’s most of the time.

I would like to say the Government of Sardegna is clear, organized and efficient, but I would lie you. Anarchy is the common factor –and please, keep in mind this is just my personal honest opinion and does not represent any other’s.

Let me show an example: wildfire emergency management. When a wildfire is declared, fighting teams arrive from Ente Foreste della Sardegna, Protezione Civile, Associazioni di Voluntariato, Vigili del Fuoco, CFVA, and “support” teams from Carabinieri, Policia Municipale, Policia Stradale, Barracelli put in appearance. What happens next? They cannot communicate because they don’t use same radio procedures (e. g. Vigili del Fuoco cannot communicate with any other agency), they don’t have a collaboration protocol and they don’t take care about each other’s job. And I am not speaking about workers –who, as I noticed while on fighting close to them are courageous, brave and strong-, but about the organizations (that fail happens at organizational level). An absolutely structural illness strongly rooted. Nonetheless, if you analyze each agency, one-by-one, regardless of the other, you could find good stuff (good procedures, knowledge and experienced people). Troubles arrive when you look at the set of them, which is kind of the opposite of High Reliability Organizations.

They use Augustus system, which tries to face emergencies from an administrative point of view, instead of from an operational one. I suppose all of you know Incident Command System, on which emergencies are managed using different teams, which are activated depending on the needs. In that system, you’ll find operations section, financial section, administration section, logistics section, healthcare and security sections… And each of them divided in as much teams as required. I mean, administration division is horizontally disposed, at the same level that other sections. In Augustus, administration is the top of the hill, the head, there is not an operational approach! That is absolutely crazy! It’s both inefficient and wasteful.

In that complex net, is Ente Foreste della Sardegna which has the aim of managing forests, of maintaining ecosystems. What really happens? Nothing. That is what they do: few things. I got bored of visiting Ente Foreste della Sardegna-managed forest without any management signal: huge amounts of accumulated fuels and non-structured forests. They don’t manage, they don’t maintain, they don’t use neither fire (they don’t even know fire is another element of the system) nor mechanical tools. And, do you know what? They take an amazing budget every single year, and they have such a big crew all over the island. That is shameful! But the worst thing is that some able-to-make-decisions people at CFVA use that as an excuse to do nothing: ‘is EFS which has to manage, we cannot set up a prescribed fire regime because managing is not our aim’, ‘we cannot reduce fuels, is EFS who has to’. That is one of the five demons shown by Marc Castellnou:  nobody wants to assume responsibility – “the fan” [Estrategias, tácticas y maniobras en incendios forestales, Castellnou et al., 2013]. They just justify their ‘doing-nothing’ policy quoting other’s mistakes and allowing fear to govern them. They only search excuses to do nothing.

That makes me think that most of that kind of people –and please remind I am speaking about a forestry governmental agency’s Commanders- do not really know many things about forest, about fires, about Mediterranean ecosystems. They don’t even know who Myers is (for example) and of course they haven’t read any of his amazing articles.

But the worst thing about that is that it seems like only few people has noticed that; and, why not? I know who they are, because I met them and I love their way of thinking. The face of the change are people like Stefania Murranca, Silvio Coco, Gavino Diana, Livio Peluffo, Salvatore Cabbidu and, obviously, Dr. Giuseppe Delogu. They are the only ones concerned by the total organizational failure. They know system is bad designed, they know system will collapse, they know system cannot manage fifth generation wildland fires (neither floods nor big emergencies in general terms), they know system has got to change as soon as possible. And they try, they try, they try, they try… They put all their efforts in that fight: they explain other Commanders the need of a new vision, a new approach, a new aim: ‘everything is already invented, we don’t need to create, we only need to adapt and make profit of other’s advances. That is science: sharing and improving!’ –says Dr. Delogu. But nobody listens, nobody wants to change rules, directives; nobody knows the meaning of High Reliability Organization and its aims. And that is both so sad and worrying.

And, let me remind that this is just my personal opinion, which has not being influenced by any other else’s. I made my opinion by looking at what was happening there.

There’s a paragraph really illustrative of the needs in “Dalla parte del fuoco”, by Dr. Delogu:

<<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”, cioè a una sua intrinseca capacità di reagire e difenderesi dalla “naturale perturbazione” del fuoco>>.

And that is only possible by managing, by reintroducing fire.

Returning to the meeting with GAUF crew, I have to say that my first impression was so great: that people were kind, strong, and smart and they looked hardworking guys. They were willing to show me their tools, their trucks, their cars… They just shared and tried to compare with Spanish system. We had a nice evening, and I knew the experience was going to be GREAT. And know I can say I wasn’t wrong.

Wow! I cannot forget to remind, just for the sardegnian visitors, that the phone number on which to call to report enviromental emergencies is the 1515.

After doing a patrol with GAUF crew (please check the GPS track below), Dr. Delogu showed me both COP and SORI-SOUP. Nice coordination centers:

 

  

 

That day finished with a great tour around the old-historical district of Cagliari, on which I could see an old stone in a wall, which has written in Spanish the transcription of a sentence from 1668. Instead of telling you the story, please, read it:

 

In the next post we will visit a helicopter station, we’ll see the first wildfire in Sardegna (a small one) and I would like to make an historical review of the island, including a brief explaining of why the Flag of Sardegna is the same that the third quarter of the Coat of Arms of Aragón. Please, keep on touch!