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!

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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!