Portugal And Wildfires

Even the BBC has reported on the latest wave of wildfires to strike this corner of the Iberian peninsula, telling “Portugal battles wildfires amid third heatwave of the year”. Am I anywhere near to feeling the heat here? Has the risk to my apartment block increased significantly as a result of these events? No and no are the prosaic answers. We have neither forests nor heatwaves.

Eucalyptus somewhere in Portugal. Packed in too tight (again)

Pinhal Novo may literally mean New Pine Forest, but the area probably has more area down to wine production than woodland. In the middle of the Setúbal peninsula, it’s far enough from river and estuary to avoid mosquitos, and close enough to the coast to avoid the real hot weather.

Let’s give an idea of the differences. Not far to the east, the city of Évora is forecast to register Thursday to Sunday temperatures of 35, 39 and 36 degrees. Pinhal Novo, if it mirrors nearby Setúbal, will record 31, 33 and 32. Around the Spanish border it also gets hot. Hence the Beeb reporting “Firefighters in Portugal are battling to contain wildfires engulfing thousands of hectares amid soaring temperatures”. So where are the wildfires?

“Around 800 personnel attended a fire near the southern town of Odemira overnight on Monday, with more than 1,400 people having to evacuate”. Not far from there, the A2 motorway, which links the Lisbon area and the Algarve, was closed recently between the turns for Almodóvar and Messines. Areas further north, but also in the interior, are also increasingly prone to wildfires.

So no surprise to see the BBC continuing “In the centre of the country, other major fires prompted the closure of several stretches of motorway, including parts of the A1 between Lisbon and Porto”. And tacking these blazes includes what kind of equipment, exactly? “Sixteen waterbombing aircraft have been deployed to support firefighting efforts across the two areas”. That kind.

Back in 2017, it was Pedrógão Grande, a small town in the Leiria District, that bore the brunt of disastrous wildfires; 64 lost their lives. Encroachment of forests is a problem: from the train, they are usually out there in the distance, but on occasion come up close to motorways. Land management is another, as some small packages of land are held privately, while others are not.

So compulsorily purchasing wooded area can be difficult. Hence firefighters try to get firebreaks formed, but often can not. During summer, the cooling and usually north-westerly wind can spread fires at catastrophic speed. But the very worst offender in the wildfire pack is the Eucalyptus, which now constitutes the largest part of the forested area of the country.

Eucalyptus on fire. Which happens too often 

After the bad fires of 2017, Esquerda online told that “With 800 thousand acres, Portugal has the largest eucalyptus plantation in Europe, a species that was a deciding factor in the tragic fires of Pedrógão Grande”. The species, which originates from Australia, is a favourite of the paper and pulp industries. They make more money; everyone else lives in fear.

The Eucalyptus sucks up groundwater at a prodigious rate. It crowds out other tree species and its aggressive nature means it will kill other less well established trees. Then, when it burns, well, it burns. It is less difficult to get ignition, and the intensity of any resultant fire makes a eucalyptus blaze very hazardous to firefighters, especially with a little wind thrown in .

As Politico has told, “the eucalyptus was first introduced in Europe as an ornamental plant in the 18th century. It thrived in Portugal, where the fast-growing species was later used in reforestation and to prevent erosion. It really took off from the mid-20th century to provide raw material for the paper and paper pulp industry”. So now it has its own business lobby.

“For decades, efforts to contain its growth ran into opposition from Portugal’s powerful paper industry lobby. The industry’s concerns carry weight. From high-quality printing sheets to trendy black toilet rolls, paper exports are big for Portugal. [in 2016] pulp and paper accounted for 4.9 percent of all exports, worth around €3 billion. The industry employs around 3,000 people, often in rural areas”. I’ll pass on the black toilet roll, though, thanks.

So no, where I live there are no significant forests, nor wildfires. But there are elsewhere in Portugal, and like similar incidents elsewhere in the world, their frequency increases as the frequency of extreme weather events does likewise. This is the real world version, whatever the deniers claim.

Once again it is down to business. Short term profits cause blindness.

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