Transcript
INTERVIEWER
In the time that you've been involved, what kind of changes have you seen?
GAVRIIL XANTHOPOULOS
I would say because I have also an experience about most of the Mediterranean countries, prevention is the victim of suppression. Meaning that in general, prevention is something that you don't see the results. Actually, you see no results because you have no fires, and you tend to forget about it.
So there is very little effort and time and money devoted to prevention compared to suppression. Whereas studies have shown, both in Europe and in the United States and in other parts of the world, that roughly $1 or 1 euros spent on prevention saves you roughly 30 plus/minus euros in suppression costs and recovery costs. So it would make sense for any rational approach to move towards prevention. And this is not the case.
Everything is done centred around suppression. That's more obvious to the people, to the politicians. They want to see airplanes, helicopters. And the more technologies we involve in this, we are thinking we are doing a better job, which is not the case. And the disasters we have been facing in Greece and in the rest of Europe exactly signify this problem.
The problem has changed. That is whereas we had more small fires in the past, we are getting in a situation now where because of very strong suppression, we are having fewer fires in easy years. But then we have a sudden blow up when the conditions are such that exceed the capacity of firefighting. And this will happen again and again because the landscapes have become very flammable in the last few years because of the continuous land abandonment that has been taking place. And that's all over Greece and all over the Mediterranean.
If we look, for example, in the 1970s, up to the 1970s, the Forest Service, which was responsible at that time for firefighting, for the whole forest management and fire management and firefighting specifically, these people did not have fire trucks, no question about aerial resources. And still they were able to fight the fires with a few forest guards, some help from the urban fire stations, when it was available and when they could reach the place, very few roads, very few tracks, but mostly with agricultural people who'd go there to save their own property. They did not expect help from anybody.
Then in 1970, they bought the first fire trucks. And they had to employ people to run those fire trucks. And then the public refrained a little bit. OK, now we have professionals doing it. And then we had airplanes. And then even the professional would say, OK, the planes will come. And that's how it worked through the '70s and '80s. And this will happen everywhere, where there is no understanding of the role that fires play in the natural ecosystems of the Mediterranean.
INTERVIEWER
How would you describe the current state of preparedness?
GAVRIIL XANTHOPOULOS
It can happen again. And there is not much we have done in terms of improving the overall management of our land. There is one thing that we are changing lately, which has to do with trying to develop forest maps, which we did not have until now.
We're going to have a [INAUDIBLE] as any normal country should do, and which traditionally has not been, except for some parts of Greece. It has not been all over Greece. And this comes because of the way Greece was liberated in various waves, and they have different ownership patterns and legislatures. But it's time that we solve this problem now. And we hope it will be making our management of the forest and of the land in general better in the future.
INTERVIEWER
Do you think that at the moment, the right people are being given the right responsibilities for this?
GAVRIIL XANTHOPOULOS
My feeling is that having an organisation like the Greek Fire Service, saying that we are responsible for forest fire fighting and leaving everybody else actually outside the decision making, they want them like not equal partners, but like an inferior helper somewhere, is wrong policy. In my view, in modern times, with the capacities that we have of intercommunicating, of understanding, of common training, we could do much better. That is I don't think we should spare anybody out of the problem because it is not possible that you have a forester there waiting and the Fire Service doing the job and them being outside.
Two reasons, first of all, because if he is not involved, we are losing manpower and capacity and knowledge. And second, because that's how the experience has been lost. If nowadays we said to the Forest Service, take the responsibility again, it will not be the same as it was in 1998 because that experience has been lost.
Forest fires have to do with training and with experience and, of course, with some preparation on all the infrastructure that is needed. So I don't want a system that is either/or. I want a system where everybody contributes.
The United States have made inroads in this direction with a National Incident Management System. Formally, it started from the forest fire field, as the national inter-agencies that manage the system. And now it has been applied all over the United States for any kind of disaster, where everybody works together under one, let's say, leadership that has prescribed how this will happen, common terminology, common knowledge, common training, and so on.