Lessons from the 2021 Fire Season: An Opportunity for Greece to Reform its Wildfire Risk Governance

The 2021fire season in Greece was disastrous in terms of area burned (140,000 ha), from six large-scale events (>10,000 ha) and one mega-fire in Evia Island (46,000 ha). These fires burned under extreme drought conditions and paradoxically, with moderate to low wind speeds, mostly inside low elevation conifer forests (Pinus halepensis) and shrublands. The concurrent burst and propagation of several large-scale events lead, once again, to the collapse of the firefighting mechanism, like what happened during the 2007 fire season when more than 260,000 ha burned. As a result, wildfires of 2021 were extinguished only when they reached the sea (Evia) or previously burned areas (western Attica), with firefighting forces completely unable to successfully contain them for weeks. The large number of reinforcements from other countries helped the government officials to understand and clarify (after debriefing) that with the current firefighting operational philosophy of the Greek Fire Service, it is impossible to contain large-scale wildfires. They detected several issues, including the total dependence on airborne firefighting means (Greece had during 2021 one of the largest aerial fleets in Europe), the inability of firefighters to operate inside forested areas, the prohibition of backfires, the slow creation rates, or complete lack, of vegetation clearings for creating new fuel breaks during firefighting, and the lack of appropriately previously treated areas. This sparked a debate among political parties and the society of what can Greece do from now on to prevent future mega-fires that can have devastating economic effects not only to the local population (e.g. northern Evia, an island that has based its local economy to forest products and recreational tourism), but also to the country’s economy (>4 billion euros in 2021). Another important issue is the environmental impact caused by the loss of forest carbon pools, soil loss and erosion, increased water runoff and degradation of the aesthetic quality, all having a long-lasting effect on the affected areas. The above lead the Greek Government to take a series of measures that were proposed, including legislation changes, administrative organization reforms and adaptation of firefighting operational tactics. A breakthrough is considered the re-creation of six special forest fire operation crews (a total of 500 people) following the standards of the US smokejumpers or hotshots’ crews. These crews are foreseen to be allowed to use backfires, after a necessary planned legislation reform. Another important legislation change was the simplification of bureaucracy that will enable landowners outside city limits to easily perform mild fuel reduction operations inside their property, currently illegal without permission. Despite these changes, an important component of improved fire risk governance is still missing. Fuel reduction is applied at the wrong scale, with inappropriate treatment methods, without proper planning and measurable outcomes and to landscape parts that can hardly influence fire propagation and intensity. In this work, we provide the context and a set of proposals and measures for fuel management that we believe are missing and if applied, can enhance prevention and improve the firefighting effectiveness, considering ecological, economic and operational issues.