The fire emergency on Vesuvius ended and the bonfires were off: to confirm it, in a post published on Facebook, it was directly the Vesuvius National Park, which declared the end of the emergency following the absence of thermal changes and, therefore, of active outbreaks. After more than 5 days of bonfires and the intervention of firefighters, civil protection and volunteers, the flames have therefore been tamed: the official data have not yet been published, but the flames would have burned between 800 and 1,000 hectares of territory, destroying some of the areas already strongly compromised by the fires of 2017.
But what is the current situation? Silvano Somma, forest doctor of the Primaurora association, activated at the forefront of the protection and safeguarding of Vesuvius and in the management of this fire, told us.
What is the situation on Vesuvius after more than 5 days of fires and what were the greatest damage?
The Vesuvius National Park declared the end of the fire emergency: during the morning, however, the restart of some outbreaks, extinct thanks to punctual interventions, was recorded. At the moment the volunteers of the Campania Region are still active on the field, together with some detachments of the firefighters.
Although the official data have not yet been released, the flames destroyed between 800 and 1,000 hectares: the fire has partly traveled the Tirone Reserve, retracing some areas of the old fire of 2017 and destroying areas that had already been reforest. Fortunately, the fire did not go too far downstream, so the reforest areas along the matrone road were not involved in the flames.
The problem is that a fire that re -proposes on the already set -up areas brings with it a high risk of desertification and consistent loss of biodiversity, but also the danger of invasion of allotone species. The bonfires also involved the areas of the “square of legality”, already strongly affected in 2017, where a natural reforestation was underway: most likely, this forest will not have the same ability to recover a second time. In particular, several areas have been destroyed in post -fire recovery, with mixed and above all Mediterranean vegetation, in favor of invasive species such as Robinia: now small reforestation interventions can be carried out, which do not have an excessive impact, but go to integrate with the spontaneous recovery of the forest. Therefore, it is more correct to speak of renaturalization than reforestation.
In general, however, it was a fire that spread to high severity and intensity, causing the complete destruction of the vegetation. Also for this reason, the state’s response was massive and timely: 6 Canadair, four helicopters, and more than 100 people by land were lined up on the site. The intervention of the army with heavy vehicles, then, made it possible to create size lines that broke the continuity of fuel.
What are the priorities to try to restore the previous situation?
Now there are two priorities: monitoring and reclamation. The same characteristics of the territory, both from the point of view of its conformation and from the point of view of vegetation, make it particularly predisposed to the restart of the outbreaks, therefore constant monitoring is an essential part to be able to intervene in a precise way. Obviously, what could help reclaim the area massively is the rain, which could clearly stem the problem.
Only after the extinguishing and the total reclamation of the bonfires (with the absence of new outbreaks), can we start thinking about the other elements, including the management of the rain itself: this territory is characterized by high sloping slopes and, precisely because of the fire, there is no more coverage and protection of vegetation, there is the risk of hydrogeological instability.
Clearly the reforestation can also help from this point of view: the more I stabilize the slope, the more I can reforest, the more I go to reforest and the more stabilize the side.
At this point, how important is the prevention of fires?
Regardless of the fact that it was a malicious or culpable fire, a theme on which the police will have to investigate, prevention remains fundamental to create the conditions to be able to manage the fires that develop in an organized way. This means breaking the continuity of the fuel with paraphoon bands before the fires occur, but also having teams ready for action, given that a fire identified immediately is more manageable.
In short, the prevention is precisely this: to plan the woods to make them safer in the event of a fire and make the operations more sustainable, avoiding that the fires go beyond the so -called “extinction threshold”, which is created when the bonfires reach such an intensity that each intervention no longer has any effectiveness and the only alternative is to let the fire runs out. This is exactly what happened in 2017 on Vesuvius and who, also thanks to timely intervention, did not reply this time.
But in these prevention activities the participation and active involvement of citizens is also essential: this morning, for example, the helicopter that flown the area recorded 3 new points of fire far from the fire, detecting people who were turning on pruning residues in full fire emergency. This means that the risk of culpable fire is around the corner and most of the population has a poor knowledge of the theme. The fires, of course, cannot be stopped or zeroed, but can be reduced by sensitizing the population: for this reason, the Primaurora association has started the “We and fire” project in schools, with the aim of raising awareness of even even the youngest and make them understand that in the dynamics of the fires, citizens are also the protagonists.
