The fire broke out on the slopes of Vesuvius has not yet been tamed: during the night the flames also resumed vigor on the Torre del Greco side, where they had already been tamed previously. At the moment, the director of the shutdown operations confirmed the presence of an active front, about one kilometer long inside the Tirone – Alto Vesuvius reserve, while in the area of the Valle dell’Allimo and along the path number 1 the situation is under control.
The stake had broken down in the evening between Thursday and Friday in the pine forest of Terzigno, along the slopes of Monte Somma, but the flames quickly extended due to the strong winds, reaching 1050 meters and above all affecting the territories of Terzigno, Boscotrecase and Trecase.
According to the data collected by the Copernicus program, 560.5 hectares of land are already burned due to the flames, with over 4.8 km2 of Mediterranean scrub gone.
In the last update of 09:00 on 11 August, the intervention of 80 Fire Brigade and 4 Canadair was confirmed, with reinforcement staff coming also from Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna and Marche. In the night, when the air intervention was forced to stop for safety reasons, several earth teams were busy tamed the flames on the south side and prevent the fire from reaching the inhabited areas.
In the meantime, the Civil Protection Department has confirmed the activation of the Copernicus EMS monitoring for the mapping of the fire via satellite. From the images detected by Copernicus’ Sentinel-2 satellite, the smoke plume caused by the fire is also clearly visible from space.
Thanks to the intervention of the army, a cutting track was then carried out, with the help of a shredder and other mechanical means. As confirmed also by the general manager of the Civil Protection of the Campania Region, Italo Giulivo, the shutdown activities proved to be particularly complicated “both for the atmospheric conditions (high temperatures and strong wind) and for the fund made up of pine needles, which contribute to the propagation of the flames”.
The causes of the stake are still unknown, but the authorities have opened an investigation by hypothesis of arson.
The flames also involved the area of the Tirone Nature Reserve, towards the sea, where the stake has been under control since yesterday afternoon. Just in that area, in recent years a reforestation program had been started after the devastating fires of 2017 which destroyed 3000 hectares of the Vesuvius National Park.
In the autumn of 2022, in fact, the “Forestamo L’Italia” campaign had been started thanks to the collaboration between the Vesuvius National Park and the Climate Network, with the plantation of numerous trees in different “areas of renaturalization”. The reforestation program had mainly concerned the Tirone Nature Reserve, where there are several species that belong to the typical Mediterranean scrub.
