Domingo Molina is a Lecturer at the Universitat de Lleida (Spain). There he coordinates the “Máster Interuniversitario en Incendios Forestales. Ciencia y Gestión Integral” (MásterFUEGO), aimed at professionals from Spain and Latin America with several years of experience in wildfire management. He recently returned from his secondment at the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche – Istituto per la BioEconomia (CNR – IBE), on the island of Sardinia, Italy. His host was Michelle Salis, a researcher specialised in modeling wildfire risk and propagation, and in fuel treatment.
Since 2020, he is Editor and Director of the journal “Incendios y Riesgos Naturales“. Domingo feels particularly identified with these roles, since “the magazine is impacting many people.” Among other achievements, the magazine’s team is preparing a book on the technical management of extinction, which he states “is going to be a qualitative leap.” In this interview, he talks about the experience he shared with CNR-IBE during his secondment.
What is your role in FIRE-ADAPT?
The person in charge of the project at the University of Lleida, Sergio de Miguel, has involved me in some of the stays in other organisations so that I can learn things and try to transfer all the knowledge we have acquired over many years, and in many projects to our partners in other countries.
What was the objective of your joint work during this secondment?
Exchange knowledge and new experiences. We started from the fact that we had known each other for many years. I´ve been to Sardinia many times and they had already been to Spain once. They had even done a secondment at the University of Lleida in which we saw some sites where prescribed burns were being done and others with preventive treatments. We also saw the management of a wildfire that had been quite large and how now, without trees, the erosive processes are being reduced.
“Proportionality in the response, not only to spend less money but also to avoid accidents, is something elementary and that we do not normally resort to because media fear is “always a drastic response””
What activities did you carry out during this secondment?
We took a look at several of the most important recent fires on the island in the last years. We visited them and discussed different perspectives on how they could have been managed.
In addition, we observed how they use a wildfire simulator with two technicians with training in physics. These technicians have developed procedures for simulating these fires that are different from those we usually use.
Then we visited one of their forest firefighting bases they have built with European funds and is quite well equipped. We brainstormed what our services and theirs have and suggested possible improvements.
Finally, we did two days of hybrid training, online and face-to-face, at the centre where Michele Salis works (CNR – IBE). Formally, Giuseppe Delogu and I were the speakers. Giuseppe was Head of the fire service. He is now retired and working on several projects. He had things to tell. One day was more focused on wildfire research and the other on wildfire management. In both, there was a large presence, both in the lecture theatre and online, of forest managers.
In what sense can these experiences of knowledge and experience-exchange be fruitful?
I’ve learned a lot of things. After seeing the problems they had, I consulted other people in Spain who know about it, which has allowed me to get up to date with it. In fact, we have channelled two new articles to deal with these issues in a book on the technical management of extinction that we are coordinating from the magazine “Incendios y Riesgos Naturales”. Since they were obvious to us and we knew they worked well, I wasn’t giving them any importance. Discussing things with other people who look at them through different glasses and have another perspective has allowed us to make these two articles.
Our book deals exclusively and in great depth (85 chapters) with the technical direction of extinction. If you tackle everything important, in the end you don’t go deeper. On one of the two days of the seminar, I transferred the contents of this book to suggest that a similar one could be made in Italy. They are also making a nationwide book that covers all aspects of fires. We argue that, if you want to cover a lot, in the end you don’t cover anything in depth and contribute very little.
At the training, Giuseppe Delogu told us about new aspects of the Italian legislation: the advanced command post of wildfire coordination is distorting a bit the way things were done before. In Spain, the legislation is better tied in the sense that it understands that, in a wildfire emergency, other emergencies can be triggered because, for example, a firefighter is injured or the fire affects civilians and property. In any case, new people arrive with other responsibilities to deal with the emergencies triggered by the engine of the emergencies, which is the wildfire. This was a disaster in Spain 20 years ago, but we learned our lesson. On the other hand, they are abandoning the engine of the problem in Italy on many occasions. There is a very old saying in Spanish that says “cuando las barbas de tu vecino veas cortar, pon las tuyas a remojar”. In other words, you have to learn from what happens to your neighbour, and not wait to suffer it again.
FIRE-ADAPT aims to see how integrated fire management contributes to preventing wildfires and enhancing ecosystem services. How can your joint work contribute to this project goal?
To the extent that we must accept that we cannot prevent wildfires. We have to assume that we must use many low or moderate-intensity wildfires as a silvicultural tool for landscape transformation. We cannot have a single, forceful response to wildfires because, since 1991, it has been written on black-and-white paper that it was a failure. That is why, 33 years later, we can no longer see the same failure. The crucial question is: are our forests going to burn? The answer almost always is going to be “yes.” Because they are going to burn, the next question is: do we want to be part of the decision of how they are going to burn, or do we want to be tourists who have an opinion on the subject? If we’re going to be managers, we have to say: we don’t want them to burn at high intensity, what do we have to do? Well, when they burn in non-extreme weather situations, lead it.
That’s why we propose the three responses to a wildfire: put it out, lead it, or confine it. Then the answers can be more or less conclusive. What we can’t do is send 15 aerial firefighting resources to anything that produces smoke. One of the articles that I have been cited the most in my life shows that we haven´t had fewer deaths in wildfires in recent decades than in the 80s and 90s. We have forest firefighters who are much better trained, much better equipped, etc., but we don’t have fewer deaths. This is a monumental failure. And the monumental failure comes after our analysis that we don’t have a proportional response to the emergency. We always send as many resources as we can, and if we have more available, we send more. In practice, this generates a new emergency, which is that someone who has a responsibility to control a fire that may not be very large, must control the fire of managing too many means at his disposal. This is like putting all the kids down the same slide… In the end, they bump into each other. Proportionality in the response, not only to spend less money but also to avoid accidents, is something elementary and that we do not normally resort to because media fear is “always a drastic response”.
What do you highlight about the joint work with the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche – Istituto per la BioEconomia?
That there is still a lot of willingness to collaborate. It is important to me to see that the response from the professional sector to the events in which I participated was great despite the communication issue. They preferred it to be spoken in Spanish instead of English because they would understand better. I made some presentations with slides in Spanish and translated into Italian, but I spoke in Spanish, and I usually speak very quickly… I had to make a lot of effort to speak slowly and not stress out those who don´t speak Spanish fluently. But there was a lot of motivation to listen to a person telling a little about how things have been progressing in Spain in recent years. I saw an important willingness to learn from other situations.
What has resulted from this secondment?
The University of Lleida and CNR – IBE have strengthened our collaboration. In addition, there is still more interest in publishing things in the journal “Incendios y Riesgos Naturales”. Several articles on Sardinia and other regions of Italy have already been published in our magazine. Italian authors are planning to make an extra effort to translate their work into Spanish to reach a market of readers who are not the ones they manage directly.
One of the topics we talked about is the big fire they´ve had at the interface with beach areas. We took a lot of photos and we planned to make a joint article about the problems that occurred in its management and in not having been able to avoid some damage to houses (there was no damage to people). They moved the people to the harbour, which seems to be the safest place, but they were blown there by all the wind smelling like fire, which distressed them. Imagine: there’s a fire, you’ve been taken out of the house, and you don’t know if it’s going to burn. In addition, some people had their cars burned next to the house. Under these circumstances, the dark smoke and smell reached them. Their lives were in danger, but they were not in a calm situation. The harbour was the safest place, but if all the smoke reached them, it wasn’t the most appropriate. Even so, it was decided that it was the most suitable. You can’t keep the population displaced and neglected of the problems that concern them.
“Are our forests going to burn? The answer almost always is going to be “yes.” Because they are going to burn, the next question is: do we want to be part of the decision of how they are going to burn, or do we want to be tourists who have an opinion on the subject?
What would you like FIRE-ADAPT to achieve?
To motivate a reflection on the legislation of the management of wildfire extinction in Italy. That’s the most important goal for me. It is not because I’ve thought so, because I haven´t read the Italian legislation, but it is because I participated in various debates on this matter, this new conditioning factor of the new Italian legislation. Like all new legislation, it aims to do the right thing, but sometimes we miss the mark and we have to know how to go back or refocus.
More about the secondment
Something about Italy that caught your attention
The units specialised in the use of technical fire for extinction, something that Sardinia has developed more than other places in Italy. It’s still dynamic. They don’t do as many prescribed burns from the point of view of prevention or territorial management, but it is the place where fire is most used as a tool for stable fire control.
An Italian word you’ve learned
Bisogno, need.
An Italian meal you liked
All the forms of pasta ai frutti di mare that they make with seafood.
A memory of Italy to keep forever
I took the car and saw a part of the island that has large spaces of grass, but with large trees that are Quercus, both holm oak and cork oak. They are emblematic species that are being exploited there, removing the cork from the cork oaks, almost more than in Spain. It seemed to me that, although there is a lot of abandonment of agricultural and forestry activity, in some places in the east of the island these practices are still maintained, and the landscape is beautiful. I like it.
