Leonardo Marcos (65 years old, León) is facing his fourth year at the helm of the General Directorate of Civil Protection, the institution that coordinates the National Emergency System and reports to the Ministry of the Interior.
After last summer in which 45 large fires devastated more than 250,000 hectares of mountains in Spain, the forests of Teruel, Castellón, Lugo and Asturias have already begun to burn this month of March and these fires portend the worst.
Ask.
The fires have started this year in the month of March, what can we expect this summer?
Answer.
There have always been fires in March, during the winter.
Especially on the Cantabrian coast.
Linked, above all, to certain agricultural uses.
What is happening these days is that the temperatures are higher than normal, the humidity is lower, the winds are stronger, in the midst of a prolonged drought.
A first idea that I would like to emphasize is that we should not continue talking about a “fire campaign”.
The campaign is annual, permanent.
For a few months you have to do prevention, and in others extinction.
Q.
Can a summer be worse than the last?
R.
We will know when the summer ends.
But we must get used to analyzing this phenomenon in longer cycles.
More information
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Q.
And what can we do to avoid those risks now?
We are on time?
R.
It is necessary to focus on prevention, the measures tending to prevent the risk from manifesting itself, or if it does occur, to minimize its effects.
Forestry is a well-known risk in Spain.
And we have, in general, good extinction and intervention devices.
There is a great field for improvement in prevention, in preparing the forests so that there are fewer fires, or that they are less virulent and controllable.
It is now a classic to say that fires go out in winter, which means nothing more than that comprehensive forest management must be carried out, all year round.
In prevention, moreover, there is a role for all citizens.
We must comply with some minimum safety rules: do not go to the forests in times of danger, of course, do not make a fire, keep the surroundings of urbanizations and houses located in forest areas or with a lot of vegetation free of weeds,
Q.
To what extent are the means of extinction decisive?
R.
This is not a problem of means of extinction, but of abandonment: we have left the rural area and we have left it alone, at most we use it as a theme park for a weekend.
It is true that a properly sized, prepared and equipped extinguishing device is essential to deal with emergency situations, be it a forest fire or any other.
But the extinction, the intervention, is only one of the phases of the cycle of emergencies.
We must put the focus before the intervention, on prevention.
The fundamental question is not whether we are prepared for extinction, but whether we are prepared to respond comprehensively to this and other risks.
Q.
And are we?
R.
To the extent that the natural environment is more or less abandoned, unmanaged or poorly managed or with methods that do not adapt to current reality, the extinction devices will be more or less stressed and able to give an adequate and safe response. .
Let's not talk about means of extinction, or intervention in a broad sense, but about comprehensive response capacity, which begins long before the intervention.
In general, we can affirm that in Spain we have a good emergency response system.
And we also have extraordinary State resources (such as the Military Emergency Unit or the air resources of the Ministry of Ecological Transition that operates the Air Force, or the Civil Guard,
which is essential for preventive evacuations to be safe) that are aimed at complementing the resources of the Autonomous Communities when their response capacity is exceeded.
That each Autonomous Community has its resources well dimensioned to the risks it must face is essential so as not to unbalance the System as a whole.
Q.
How do new technologies contribute to fire management?
A.
Fortunately, we increasingly have more and better technological tools: a European satellite system (Copernicus) that provides very precise images, very useful not only for recovery, but also for intervention;
this year we have the mobile phone alert system fully operational (the ES-Alert system, which we manage at the Ministry of the Interior and which is available to the Autonomous Communities and Ceuta and Melilla);
The use of drones has become widespread, allowing emergency managers to know exactly the situation in real time.
I must also mention the information provided by the State Meteorological Agency: abundant, precise, up-to-date, accessible.
Q.
What would you say to those firefighters who will be called up in a few weeks to fight on the front lines after having been out of work for months?
R.
Each Public Administration has to organize its resources as it deems best in accordance with its priorities.
Risk management must be comprehensive.
In the case of forest fires, the work is for the whole year.
When we talk about investing more in prevention, we are talking about spending less on intervention and recovery, and, above all, we are talking about increasing our well-being.
I insist, it is not an expense, it is an investment.
Q.
So what would you say to those firefighters?
R.
The fundamental element in the Civil Protection and Emergencies system are the professionals, therefore we need well-trained professionals, with stable and well-paid jobs.
Q.
And in the longer term, what can we do to prevent our forests from burning?
R.
The climatic conditions force us to adapt to this new scenario: with more forest management, with better land management, with a greater preventive culture.
Forest fires have always existed, and are part of the cycle of Nature.
It is not a question of avoiding them (which, surely, is impossible), but of avoiding that they significantly affect our security, our well-being and our way of life.
It is about preventing them from being catastrophic.
Q.
Beyond the incendiaries, human action is behind most of the fires.
R.
The culture of prevention is a fundamental part of any security strategy.
We all can (and should) be agents of our own security.
A good part of the so-called winter fires have to do with agricultural practices that get out of control.
In the height of summer, it is not uncommon for serious fires to start due to the use of certain machines at inappropriate times.
Q.
Do you think that a more forceful criminal complaint would serve to prevent a good part of the fires?
A.
The criminal complaint must be directed at pathological cases, at clearly malicious or seriously irresponsible conduct.
But the fundamental thing, together with prevention, is awareness of the risk.
Q.
There are forest areas like the one that burned this week in Teruel and Castellón where almost no one has passed since the Civil War, in fact the Tedax were there just in case, and they should not be the only ones in Spain.
What should be done with those forest masses that surround our towns and villages in emptied Spain?
A.
The urbanization process, or the abandonment of the rural environment, has a direct impact on the traditional relationship with the forest masses, with the natural environment.
When the forest ceases to be a resource it can easily become a gigantic accumulation of fuel.
When the forest is integrated into the economic cycle, when it is a source of wealth, a livelihood, it is easier to manage it safely and sustainably.
We cannot allow nature to become a threat.
More than 40,000 hectares burned so far this year
ELIONA RAKIPAJ
The fire in Castellón and Teruel on March 24 has devastated 4,700 hectares.
It is the worst in a month of March since 1992, according to data from the Ministry of Ecological Transition.
And according to the European Information System on Forest Fires, so far this year 41,276 hectares have burned.
Cantabria has closed the month with a balance of 152 forest fires more than in the same period of 2022, when they did not reach 200, reports the regional government.
This March, one of the worst months of the year for the fight against fire in the region, 343 fires have been recorded in Cantabria and last year there were 191. And Asturias has closed March with 121 outbreaks.
In Lugo (Galicia) the fire has burned more than 1,400 hectares.
The past month has been particularly hard on fires.
This wave has coincided with the hottest month of March than in previous years.
The high temperatures, which have caused the absence of rain and the long-lasting meteorological drought since December, are one of the causes that increase the risk of fires.
The State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) already warned on March 26 that the month of March would end with "a really abnormal situation in terms of temperatures."
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