Fires in the Mediterranean
Examining the causes
of large forest fires
in Mediterranean countries
Dr. Gavriil Xanthopoulos
National Agricultural Research Foundation
Institute of Mediterranean Forest Ecosystems
and Forest Products Technology
E-mail address: gxnrtc@fria.gr
Large fires
• In exceptional years, when the conditions
favor fire eruption, acceleration and spread,
many fires become very large having
catastrophic results of a much higher scale.
• This frightful reality in the last decades has
prompted serious efforts in single countries
and at the European Union level to address the
forest fire problem.
• The results are not
satisfactory so far.
(JRC report 2008)
Megafires
• The term “megafires” has been used repeatedly to
describe such fires and has grabbed a lot of attention.
• It is a relatively recently coined term that describes
those extreme fires “that exhibit fire behaviour
characteristics that exceed all efforts at control,
regardless of the type, kind, or number of firefighting
assets that are brought to bear”.
• Example:
Fire at Zaharo (2007)
• Forest fires are a serious problem in all the
countries of Mediterranean Europe.
• Each summer thousands of fires erupt in all of
them mobilizing significant resources for their
suppression.
• However, whatever the firefighting effort, the
total area that burns in each country is
substantial.
Few fires become large
• Examination of fire statistics in numerous studies
in all countries with Mediterranean climate
around the world, shows that, as a rule, a small
number of fires contribute most of the burned
area.
• These few fires are the ones that grow to very
large sizes under extreme weather conditions,
exhibiting fire behavior that makes firefighters
clearly unable to intervene for as long as the
adverse weather persists.
Need to examine the increasing trend
of large fires
• Attention to the phenomenon of large fires has
been increasing in the last few years as the
frequency of their appearance is on the rise and
the same is true for their destruction potential.
• The work presented here is an effort to
examine this phenomenon focusing on the
causes that lead to such large fires in countries
with Mediterranean climate.
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The factors leading to large fires
Analyzing the international literature, certain
factors emerge as being associated with the
probability of a fire becoming large:
1. Extreme fire danger conditions: strong wind, high
temperature, low relative humidity, unstable
atmospheric profile, rugged topography, drought
stricken vegetation, and heavy fuel loading.
2. Place and time of fire start
3. Firefighting response and effectiveness
4. Values at risk in the path of a fire
Fire cause categories
• Fires start from natural causes, mainly
lightning, and from human causes.
• Human caused fire starts may be accidental,
due to negligence or due to arson.
• Fires from all these causes have the potential
to become large and devastating but the
question that needs to be addressed, in order to
improve fire prevention planning, is if the
probabilities are the same for all three
categories of fire starts.
What is causing large fires?
• In forest fire statistics, the term “fire cause”
usually refers to the specific way in which a
fire starts.
• However, in trying to understand what is the
cause that leads to the increased frequency of
large fires, their extreme characteristics and
destruction potential, all four causal factors
should be considered.
Lightning (1)
• Lightning distribution is not
random. It follows specific patterns,
being higher when there is humidity
in the atmosphere. Furthermore,
lightning density increases with
elevation.
• Association of lightning with high
moisture or rain reduces the
probability of fire starts from
lightning.
Lightning (2)
Lightning (1)
• However, especially in inland areas of high
elevation, lightning due to convective activity
is likely even in less humid periods.
• As a result lightning caused fire starts in such
areas are not rare. Moisture and especially
temperature conditions there, as a rule, are not
conducive to quick fire acceleration. Thus, an
effective fire detection system combined with
capacity for quick and effective initial attack
may lead to quick suppression of such fires.
• In many countries with continental climate,
including parts of Mediterranean countries which
are far from the sea, the combination of dry summer
conditions with episodes of increased lightning
activity, often associated with the passage of a
strong cold front, may result in a very large number
of lightning caused fires.
• Then, if there is insufficient availability of initial
attack forces, fires have to be assigned priorities and
some of them are not attacked immediately. Such
fires have occasionally grown to significant sizes.
2
Accidental fires (1)
• Accidental fires, such as those caused by
power-lines, car accidents, explosions of
various types, etc. are always associated with
human activities.
Accidental fires (2)
• They may start under all types of conditions
and are usually close to where people live,
work or recreate. As a result, they are detected
quickly and firefighting forces can reach them
without difficulty.
• Occasionally, of course, there are exceptions,
such as plane and helicopter crashes, but
overall this type of fire causes are not expected
to contribute significantly to the overall number
of fires that grow large.
Negligence (1)
Negligence (2)
• People causing fires by being negligent may be
found anywhere. The more human activity in a
forested area, an agricultural area, or a WUI
area, the higher the chance of an ignition
source that could result in a forest fire.
• When examining the causes of large forest fires
investigators are often surprised by the
carelessness, irresponsibility or even sheer
stupidity of certain people that become the culprits
of a disaster without any intention.
• The public often dismisses this cause category in
favor of motivated and premeditated arson,
associating the latter with high fire danger
conditions but both experience and scientific
evidence show that the majority of forest fires in
the Mediterranean countries, including large
conflagrations, are the result of human negligence.
More fires in critical weather?
• What creates the impression of an intentional
increase in the number of fires under critical
weather conditions, is that ignition sources
such as a discarded lighted cigarette, an openair barbeque, a car exhaust on dry grass, or
burning of agricultural residues such as wheat
stubble or pruned branches, although present
in the countryside at roughly the same
frequency at all times, are much less likely to
ignite a fire under mild weather conditions
than under severe ones.
Probability of ignition as a function of
needle moisture content
From the
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Mild conditions – easy control
• Furthermore, when a fire starts under mild
conditions it is easily extinguished, often by
the culprits themselves, so it does not become
known to the public.
Arson (1)
• Unlike the category above, arson is defined as
the willful, malicious, deliberate and
premeditated burning of a structure, forest,
land or property.
• The motivation of arsonists may be direct or
indirect profit such as land gains, changing
land use, creating job opportunities, range
improvement, etc., but may also be revenge, an
effort to hide a crime, or even various forms of
terrorism.
Arson (2)
Large fire causes often remain unknown
• A separate category of arsonists are pyromaniacs.
• Depending on their motivation, some arsonists want
to cause a relatively small fire focused as much as
possible on the specific area they want to burn with
some additional land sacrificed to avoid creating
direct suspicions.
• Others, especially pyromaniacs, are interested in
satisfying their instincts or other objectives such as
terror. For them, the larger and more spectacular a
fire, the better. Obviously, the latter are the most
dangerous type of arsonists and the ones that need to
be prevented from doing their work by all means.
• Fire cause investigation is an important element
in the context of the fire management scheme. It
forms the backbone of fire prevention. It is also a
very difficult task that cannot always be carried
out successfully. As a result, the causes of many
large fires often remain unknown or uncertain.
• However, examining numerous examples of large
fires that their origins have been determined with
some certainty, one can easily recognize that all
the above fire cause categories are present.
The large fires
of the summer of 2007 in Greece
Examples of large fire causes
• In Greece, the fires of the summer of 2007
were by far the worst in history leading to the
death of 78 people.
• Official fire investigation results have not been
announced publicly but it will be tried to
develop an understanding of the causes from
information collected mainly from newspaper
reports.
4
The fire of Parnis National Park
June 27-July 2, 2007
• In June 27, 2007, a fire that started from
powerline sparks near the village of
Dervenohoria, was attacked ineffectively and
one day later burned
most of Parnis
National Park
near Athens.
Mt. Penteli fire, August 16, 2007
The fire of Aigialia, Peloponnese
July 24-28, 2007
• A month later, on July 24th, a fire that started
in a garbage dump in Aigialia, although
initially controlled was not guarded properly,
re-started and burned more than 30,000 ha.
Penteli fire, August 16, 2007 (from NET TV)
Alleged cause: Arson by a father who was mourning
for his firefighter volunteer son who had died earlier.
Photo: M. Athanasiou
The chronicle of the disaster (23-08-2007)
The fires of August 23-31, 2007
Fires starting on
August 23 on Parnon
mountain (morning)
and Taygetos
mountain
(afternoon). Initial
attack failed.
Image: NASA Aqua sensor
5
24-08-2007
Late morning
Fire of Paleohori-Makistos-ArtemidaZaharo (Aug. 24th) (from M. Athanasiou)
Early afternoon
Image: NASA Terra sensor
Aqua sensor
25-08-2007
(NASA image, captured by the MODIS aqua sensor)
Burned areas (Aug. 23 – Sep. 5, 2007)
Ilia, 25-8-2007
Photo: M. Athanasiou
Speculation on the causes
• Especially in the last week of August, with the
firefighting mechanism overwhelmed by the
fires and the death toll rising, the Greek
government and part of the mass media and the
public reached the conclusion that the country
was facing an asymmetric threat, a military
term used for terrorist attacks.
• However, in the weeks that followed, and as
fire investigation started bringing results, it
became evident that the fires were not by any
means part of an organized terrorist plot.
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Identified causes, August 2007
–An old woman burning grasses in an agricultural field
(Parnon fire),
–Another one cooking on an open fire in her yard
(Paleohori fire),
–A shepherd practicing traditional (illegal) burning
(Taygetus fire),
–A case of trying to eliminate criminal evidence in
relation to a marijuana plantation (Sekoulas fire),
–Property disputes (Mistos of Evia fire),
–Sparks from use of a metal cutting device (Mesorahi of
Evia fire).
Southern Europe
• The situation in regard to the fire causes in the
other Mediterranean countries is not much
different.
• All southern European countries have
experienced extreme fire seasons and
catastrophic single fires in the last two
decades.
Horta de Sant Joan fire, Catalonia, Spain
The deadly Guadalajara fire (16/7/2005)
• Arson was the cause of the tragic Horta de
Sant Joan fire, in Catalonia, Spain in 2009, that
killed six firefighters.
• Two persons that were trekking in the
mountains were accused of starting the fire and
taking pictures next to it.
• On the other hand unbelievable negligence, to
the point of stupidity, of a group of 10 daytrippers who started a barbeque under extreme
fire weather conditions in a nature reserve of
pine woodland in the Guadalajara province,
resulted in a 12,000 ha fire that killed 11
firefighters.
• They acted ignoring the advice of locals that
told them the conditions were too dangerous.
The origin of the Guadalajara fire
Fire evolution
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Conditions matter!
• The description of fire starts above illustrates that
any fire cause may lead to a devastating fire if the
conditions are “right”.
• These conditions refer to one or more of the other
causal factors mentioned earlier.
• Adverse fire weather conditions combined with
increased vegetation provide the potential for
extreme fire behavior.
• Ineffective fire detection and initial attack provide
the opportunity for the fire to grow to intensities
that dwarf all firefighting efforts until weather,
topography or fuels improve.
WUI
• Fires reaching WUI areas often turn attention
to saving lives and homes maximizing the
burned area and the total number of
settlements and structures finally affected.
• The 20,000 ha fire of east Attica in August
2009 that started 35 km NE of Athens and
stopped when it reached suburbs of Athens and
agricultural lands 30 km to the south after
affecting 12 settlements, provides the best
illustration of the problem.
NE Attica fire
evolution during
its main run on
August 22, 2009
Photo: M. Athanasiou
Large fires in N Attica since 1981
Source: Newspaper “Eleftherotypia”
Analysis: M. Athanasiou &
G. Xanthopoulos
Conclusions on prevention (1)
• Having examined the causes of large fires it
becomes obvious that as these cover all the
potential spectrum, all known types of fire
prevention measures are needed.
• It is quite clear that prevention should not
focus only on the hand lighting a fire. Public
education campaigns, better (and objective)
fire investigation, punishment of arsonists,
better surveillance etc. are only one side of the
coin.
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Death penalty?
Conclusions on prevention (2)
• The other side of the coin includes maintaining
forest vegetation to safe levels through forest
management and fuel reduction projects close
to settlements; developing safer WUI areas;
and of course preparing sophisticated
presuppression plans that well trained and
equipped firefighting forces will have to apply
effectively.
General conclusion
• In general, failure to control the overall
number of fire, from whatever cause,
increases the likelihood to experience large
fires that escape initial attack.
• Consistent and multifaceted prevention effort
is clearly needed in order to reduce disasters.
• The aim should be not only to reduce fire starts
but also, assuming that this may fail, such as
under a terrorist plot, to minimize damages and
panic in order to get hold of the situation as
early as possible.
Thank you
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