Eco123 Revista da Economia e Ecologia
If you live in the countryside – and not just in Portugal – you know that you have a deadline, just as we have an editorial deadline at this newspaper. The deadline is Sunday, 15 June 2025, and, as from next Monday, you have to have your land, your forest and your undergrowth clean: This is called ‘Gestão de combustível’ in Portuguese… everything that is combustible must be removed and kept away from a possible fire: weeds must be cut, dead trees felled and, even in the forest, herbs must be kept to a minimum. The landowner must therefore ‘clean’ his land, tidy it up, put it in order. You should shred these leftovers into mulch. Does this help to minimise the risk of forest fires? The government has passed a law about this. Find out more! Every town hall has clear instructions on this.
When managing his property, an owner must consider several things at once. Firstly, what material is his house built from? He should probably build firewalls. If the house has a wooden roof truss, the risk of fire increases. This is because a forest fire approaches a house either through the doors and windows to get into the unprotected house, or via the roof truss. Once the roof truss is on fire, the house is already lost. Firewalls stop the fire. So, what would an adequate solution look like here? There are roof constructions made of iron and concrete – non-combustible materials. Instead of windows and doors made of wood or PVC, architects recommend aluminium windows and shutters made of non-combustible materials, i.e., metal. Homeowners close the shutters of their house and do not let the fire into the house. When a forest fire is approaching, they can thus bar up their home like a castle, pull up the drawbridge and have wet towels and a bucket of water ready to hand at the front door.
Basically. Such people live in a forest fire area, just as we do in Monchique. You always have your gas mask to hand, and you wear protective clothing, like the men from the fire brigade. Don’t come in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt! Protect your house from the fire by wearing thick clothing. So, when a fire is threatening, always wear fireproof clothing!
Have you ever thought of behaving like the people who lived before us? Build a cistern that can store a large volume of water. We have a cistern with 50,000 litres of water and an overflow. The winter rain – of which there was plenty this year – flows over the roof into the gutters and from there into the cistern. When it is full, it has an overflow, and the rainwater flows into a second cistern. Get yourself several water storage tanks. Water is life. Water saves lives. If necessary, build a swimming pool that you can jump into in the event of a fire: it’s always better than nothing…
www.wetnet.ptWe have made something out of our cistern: a 1½-inch diameter pipe goes from here and flows into a sprinkler system. We use rainwater to prevent potential forest fires. We have ten high-performance sprinklers in and around the forest, just like those used in agriculture. We only use sprinklers that are made of metal and are therefore incombustible. Forest fire specialist Professor Domingos Viegas has been experimenting with sprinkler systems at the University of Coimbra for many years and has perfected them. During various simulated fires at the university’s test site, he has done something that is very useful in everyday practice and has proven its worth: using and testing high-performance sprinklers against forest fires. His expertise is in greater demand today than ever before, even though the professor has long since retired: the EU Commission in Brussels has recognised his work and appointed him as the EU’s forest fire specialist. Time and again, forests burn due to arson, whether in Greece or France, but also due to the carelessness of people who have no experience in dealing with forests. They light fires to organise barbecues, which are strictly forbidden, and burning cigarette ends are simply thrown into the undergrowth. And then the unimaginable happens: a raging inferno breaks out, not only destroying forests and houses, but also killing people and animals.
A sprinkler system can be co-financed through crowdfunding. This is where the Wetnet concept comes in: obstructing and preventing forest fires before they start, or even extinguishing forest fires. Helping the fire brigade. In the botanical garden of ECO123, we have built a small bunker in the middle of the forest, from which one person can operate the sprinkler system. Each sprinkler has its own water pipe. Before planting several thousand new young trees that would be devastated by the next forest fire, we wanted to make sure that we could protect these new seedlings. We took a map of the area and drew our sprinkler system onto it. It is important to recognise and mark the main direction of the wind correctly. Because every sprinkler is mounted against the wind. Every fire is fuelled by the wind. In Monchique, the main wind direction is NORTH (north-west and north-east). The forest fires of 1991, 2003, 2004, 2016 and 2018 were all driven by the main wind direction NORTH.
When I go into the bunker, I have a switch there that switches on the electricity and brings it to a pump that drives all the sprinklers. If you want to make yourself fireproof, get an emergency generator (at least 7,000 watts of power) and run a power cable into the bunker to power the system. Because in the event of a forest fire, there will likely be an immediate power failure of the EDP network, etc., so that you absolutely need your own powerful emergency power generator. We recommend the Italian manufacturer Ducati, with whom we have had good experiences. The botanical garden has an area of 3.5 hectares of woodland. The furthest sprinkler is about 200 metres from the bunker and the pump. We dug a trench from the bunker to the sprinkler, into which we buried the PVC pipe at a depth of 40cm so that it could not be damaged by a forest fire. Where the sprinkler is located, we install a cast-iron bend, which leads into a three or six-metre-long steel pipe, into which a thread has been cut, both at the top and bottom. The sprinkler is screwed on at the top and the cast-iron bend of the PVC pipe is installed at the bottom.
In the event of a forest fire, we are ready for action in less than five minutes. The first step is to get the dry forest floor wet, because burning leaves can fly for kilometres and carry the fire further. Let’s recap. Step 1: Clear all combustible material from around your house. Step 2: Reduce all combustible materials when building your house. Replace windows. Instal non-combustible shutters. Make sure that your roof truss does not catch fire. 3. Your forest deserves special protection, because no insurance will cover the damage. A sprinkler system not only soaks the forest floor, but it also extinguishes burning trees.
Incidentally, such a sprinkler system can also save lives at open-air festivals. Every car park is a ticking time bomb. As long as cars are powered by petrol engines, these vehicles can also blow up and burn. A well-fitted sprinkler system can work wonders. If you are interested, you can visit the Esgravatadouro Botanical Gardens in Caldas de Monchique every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and find out more about the sprinkler system or visit https:// www.wetnet.pt (from 21st June onwards).
