Eco123 Revista da Economia e Ecologia
18/07/2026 – 25/07/2026 Director: Uwe Heitkamp
Edition 28.2026 – Continuation
Provide the residents of villages that are at risk of forest fires with the means to put them out. Don’t evacuate residents who don’t wish to be evacuated, as they want to make themselves useful. But when you have just a bucket of water in your hands, it is not enough. Retrofit residents’ homes: provide them with grants for building roof structures made of reinforced concrete rather than timber, and equip them with aluminium shutters. Enact laws and building regulations stipulating that every house must have at least one rainwater cistern, and that every roof must be fitted with gutters capable of collecting thousands of litres of rainwater. And ensure there are fire-safe refuge areas where people can rest, seek shelter and organise help, food and drink. Because forest fires can always be extinguished, provided that the resources and means are available. This is an essential part of forest fire prevention.
The worst thing you can do during a forest fire is to try and flee. Don’t run away, because the flames will always catch up with you; don’t get into your car, because the tyres will burst in the fire. Travelling by car leads to tragedies such as those in Pedrógão Grande in 2017 and Los Gallardos and Bédar in Andalusia in 2026. First the tyres catch fire, and then the occupants of the car will burn to death. I once met a man who had a cistern full of rainwater and took refuge in it during a fire. That saved his life. So, let’s collect water from the rain in winter and use it to tackle the fires in summer. Let’s stand up to forest fires. Yes, the elderly and the sick should be evacuated. But please let anyone who can help the fire brigade do so. Please.
Monday 6th August 2018. It has grown dark in Caldas de Monchique. The atmosphere is illuminated by the fires all around. You briefly stand there, a hose in your hand and your mind fully alert, taking in the burning landscape of the forest around you; your movements become second nature. You make sure the hose is clear and doesn’t come into contact with the fire, not even by accident. There’s no room for error at this moment. You are fully determined to extinguish the fire that is about to destroy both you and your trees. At such moments, you can’t afford to doubt what you’re doing or how you’re doing it. Yes, your life is in danger, and you’re fully aware of this. You’ve extinguished everything behind you. So, the fire can’t attack you from behind. You have that under control. You’re in the process of attacking the fire from the front. The wind keeps driving the flames towards you, and you know full well that you’ll put out the fire. Because you have the water. Every fire – the first wave, the second, and all those that follow. You never tire of reassuring yourself that you will triumph over the fire and that you will protect your trees.
I hear voices in the night. My neighbour has called for the help of some of his colleagues from work, and there are at least ten of them. I hear João from Quinta da Idalina shouting out, and I can see that his colleagues aren’t just mentally strong. This isn’t the first fire they’ve put out together. They don’t give the fire a chance. It was exactly the same back in September 2003. That was what convinced me.
Slowly, you move forward, heading towards the various fires and putting them out. One by one. The whole forest is on your side. You’re not alone. You spray the trees with water so that they can’t catch fire. The pines and the cork oaks are protected. The barks of both the corks and the old pines, which are over a hundred years old, protect the trees when you wet them. Your water jet reaches three metres high. That’s enough.
There is no sign of any firemen or civil protection agents. We are exposed to the fire without any protection at all. (As I later found out, the regional commander Vítor Vaz Pinto had been dismissed from his post on 5th August by the government in Lisbon and a new commander by the name of Patrícia Gaspar had been appointed, but she was only due to arrive in Monchique on the Tuesday afternoon. This is what was stated in the report presented to the Portuguese Parliament, after the event.) This means that, since Sunday, there has been no commander responsible for managing more than 1.500 firefighters. No order has been given to intervene. The firemen have not been given any orders to fight the fire today and they do not know what they are supposed to be fighting. The municipality of Monchique has been evacuated and the houses have been abandoned to the flames without there being any resistance at all. At my property, I am the only one fighting the forest fire.
The forest fire keeps coming at you in waves, like the sea hitting the beach. The fire is whipped up by the wind, sending out sparks that are carried further. They fly through the night. The longer you hold your ground, the wetter the forest floor around you becomes, and the sparks go out when they hit the ground. That’s what it’s all about. Don’t despair. Don’t give up. As long as you have water, you have the upper hand over the fire. Don’t run away. I have a forest of a hundred pine trees, fifty cork oaks and other tree species to defend. I’m wearing a gas mask that enables me to breathe. Every hour I take a short break to get my bearings and gather my strength. I have a three-hundred-year-old cork oak that’s just starting to burn and needs to be put out quickly. It’s already charred on one side; the other side, facing away from the fire, is unharmed. It’ll pull through. By four o’clock in the morning, all the fires in the forest have been extinguished and I go to rest, but not without leaving someone to keep a watch out for fresh outbreaks of fire.
She wakes me at six o’clock and calls me over to an Italian stone pine whose base has caught fire. I get my hose in the right position again and carry on. The Italian stone pine that I’m putting out now won’t survive. Bark beetles love to feed on diseased and weak trees that cannot defend themselves with resin; they bore a hole through the bark and slowly eat the tree from the inside. That’s why, the next day, I grab a bucket full of lime and water, turn the mixture into a paste and brush it onto the damaged areas of the black bark. Now the bark is white and gleaming. The bark beetle is confused, as it hadn’t expected lime. Lime deters the beetle and disinfects the wounds caused by the burning. And it prefers to avoid white trees. I keep a close eye on what’s happening. Every day I check on my trees.
My main job is as a journalist, and some years ago I conducted a fascinating interview with a leading scientist from the Club of Rome. He had written a moving book on climate change, and I managed to persuade him to give me an interview: Per Espen Stoknes. To do this, I travelled four thousand kilometres by train from Monchique via Huelva, Madrid and Barcelona, Paris and Frankfurt to Hamburg. From there, I travelled via Copenhagen and Gothenburg to Oslo. The journey took me three and a half days. My carbon footprint for this train journey was less than 160 kg of CO₂. I hadn’t flown for years. All climate scientists agree that travelling by train is more environmentally friendly. But things were to turn out differently. When I boarded the train in Oslo at six o’clock in the morning on Friday 3rd August, to set off on the long journey home, I had no idea that there would be another fire in Monchique around midday. And when I got off the train in Copenhagen just before 2 pm to grab something to eat, my mobile rang. My young colleague, who was training as a journalist in Monchique, informed me that a new fire had just been reported. The fire brigades were called out. Once again, Monchique, the ‘capital of forest fires’, was the talk of the town. Once again, there was a fire in Portugal. While I was travelling on the Intercity train from Denmark to Germany, the disaster still felt far away. Exactly three days still separated me from it. Yet my mind was already racing. All my climate activism seemed to be having no effect. Instead, I was mentally preparing myself for dealing with the fire.
Greenpeace has recently turned its attention to all available data on forest fires in Portugal. As in many other countries, the risk of forest fires in Portugal has changed over recent decades due to various factors, some of which are linked to natural or physical conditions, whilst others are linked to socio-economic, political and organisational activities. Using statistical data on national fire incidents and their extent – available since 1943 – as well as on climatic factors, vegetation cover and characteristics, population trends and administrative changes within the forest fire risk management system, Greenpeace provides an overview of forest fires in Portugal and how they have developed over the past few decades. It is not simply a matter of extinguishing the fires and preparing for them more effectively. The long-term data serve to obtain a comprehensive overview of some of the key factors that have played a role over the past eight decades; particular attention is paid to the period from 2000 to 2025, for which there is more data available. Above all, the aim is to properly contextualise the wildfires and significantly reduce the risks posed by possible wildfire hazards. One measure, for example, would be to keep flammable tree species away from inhabited communities, or to relocate eucalyptus plantations in the desert…
On Monday 6th August 2018, I arrived in Portugal, having travelled from Norway. As is usual in Portugal, the police were standing in the middle of the road, only this time they were blocking the route I needed to take to reach my home. The access roads to the villages that were on fire were cordoned off over a wide area from Porto de Lagos onwards. The residents were being evacuated. There was no way through to Monchique. So, I pretended I was heading for Silves and took the next road up via Odelouca, Monchicão and Fornalha – a side road that wasn’t blocked off. The police don’t know every single road. Fires were burning everywhere in the fields – a scene that resembled a theatre of war more than a peaceful civilisation. We carefully made our way through toppled wooden telephone poles and fallen trees. We zigzagged up to Fornalha and then on to Esgravatadouro near Caldas de Monchique. It was about twelve kilometres I had to travel before I reached home. All the neighbours had been evacuated; not a soul was left to put out the fires at the abandoned farmsteads and houses. At that precise moment, I was getting ready to extinguish the fire in my little woodland and then to tackle the forest fire.
It doesn’t really matter what causes a forest fire – whether it’s an overhead high-voltage power line coming into contact with vegetation, the wind blowing trees against the lines, or a farmer burning his compost. As it happens, there are already machines made available free of charge by the town hall, which can be used to chop and shred leftover branches and leaves. The resulting product can later be reused as mulch when planting trees.
There are plenty of reasons for lighting a fire. We need to minimise the risk of a small fire turning into a major blaze, or, to put it another way, to prevent an illness turning into an epidemic.
Drawing on all my experience from five forest fires, I came up with an idea. When you’re equipped with just a single hose and have to tackle several hectares of forest fire on your own, you long to be able to spray water onto the fire from at least ten nozzles at the same time. So, right in the thick of the fire, an idea struck me, which later developed into a plan. WetNet, the sprinkler system was born.
What does it mean to minimise the risks of forest fires? It means that, as a general rule, all fires must be banned during the summer months, including barbecues in open gardens. It means that every household in a rural area must have its own fire-extinguishing system at the ready – water cisterns, pumps and sprinkler systems – and that every household must have its own emergency generator, as the electricity supply is usually the first thing to fail during a forest fire. Those who prepare themselves both mentally and organisationally for forest fires experience fewer nasty surprises and, above all, fewer fatalities. According to Greenpeace, 418 civilians died in forest fires in Portugal between 1931 and 2025; in 2017 alone, there were 122 fatalities. Every forest fire that is extinguished has the potential to be a success story. Every forest fire that is extinguished helps to slow down climate change. Preventing fires – that is what must be firmly ingrained in people’s minds…
Greenpeace writes: “Integrated forest fire risk management comprises the following phases: preparedness, prevention, suppression and recovery. These phases are interlinked and equally important.”
It continues: “As in many other countries, the risk of forest fires in Portugal has changed over recent decades due to the positive or negative effects of various factors, some of which are linked to natural or physical conditions, whilst others are linked to socio-economic, political and organisational activities. Using statistical data on national fire incidents and their extent – available since 1943 – as well as on climatic factors, vegetation cover and characteristics, population trends and administrative changes within the forest fire risk management system, we provide an overview of forest fires in Portugal and their development over the past decades. The long-term data serve to provide a comprehensive overview of some of the key factors that have played a role over these eight decades; particular attention is paid to the period from 2000 to 2025, for which we have more data.”
In its next issue, ECO123 will report on the political conclusions that can be drawn from this information. Part 3 focuses solely on the solutions. One of our own solutions is the sprinkler system, which we will use to protect our forest in the future…
