We burn because we neither learn nor comply
Opinion: Valentina Marcelino DN
Following the tragic fires of 2017, considerable progress was made in developing a strategy for preventing and combating wildfires in Portugal. Public policy measures were implemented, discussed with experts, participated in by local stakeholders, and monitored by regular reports from the Forest Fire Management Agency (AGIF).
The results were, at least until the end of 2024, fewer ignitions, less burned area, more resources, more budget.
The average burned area fell by 59%, the number of fires decreased by 63%, and the annual budget increased by 4.5%. Funding distribution also changed, moving away from the model focused almost exclusively on firefighting (80%) to a more balanced approach, with 55% allocated to prevention and 45% to firefighting. There was also a 45% increase in human resources, while “major fires” remained within the historical average.
But this summer has once again shown that the underlying problem persists. Extreme weather conditions—and so far, there have been 22 consecutive days of extreme severity, with temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius in several regions and minimum relative humidity below 20%—increase the risk of fires, but the main vulnerability lies in the difficulty in controlling those fires that escape initial intervention.
As Paulo Fernandes, a researcher at UTAD, pointed out in an interview with DN in this edition, “when fires become large, we never manage to improve.” Successive rekindlings, the lack of perimeter consolidation, and the lack of sufficient specialized teams explain why similar fires last fewer days in Spain than in Portugal.
We have the largest deployment ever – 14,155 personnel, 3,162 vehicles, and 72 aircraft. Never before has so much been invested in prevention, surveillance, and technology. But despite everything, we continue to see villages surrounded by brush, fires that aren’t combated in time, populations feeling abandoned, and mayors reporting a lack of coordination. We continue to repeat familiar mistakes.
By the end of Sunday, 173,000 hectares had burned in 6,346 fires. Compared to similar periods, this area is already the second largest in the last 10 years – the first was in 2017.
We burn because we haven’t learned or accomplished everything. Because, beyond planning, we still need to implement on the ground what’s outlined in the reports and approved in the strategies. The expenditure trends described in the Integrated Rural Fire Management System (SGIFR) show that between 2020 and 2024, expenditure reached 2.5 billion euros, 808 million euros less than anticipated.
In six years, the National Action Plan to prevent rural fires, which includes 97 projects, has achieved 42% of its objectives, but still has 58% to be implemented by 2030.
If there’s one lesson the summer of 2025 has already taught us, it’s this: the firefighting force may be larger than ever, but simply adding resources isn’t enough. Fighting rural fires requires a warlike approach: advance planning, studied scenarios, guaranteed logistics, flawless coordination, and resources available at the right time. If a failure occurs in any of these areas, the “enemy”—the fire—quickly gains ground. SGIFR reports confirm that progress has been made in implementing planned actions, but they also reveal delays.
In 2024, for example, several fuel management and landscape reorganization measures fell short of targets, meaning that part of the “battle plan” was not implemented on time.
This discrepancy between planning and implementation continues to be one of the system’s Achilles’ heels: more is invested, better planning is done, but it isn’t always implemented on the ground. Advance planning, mobilization capacity, specialized training, field discipline, and ongoing evaluation are all required.
We need to join forces, perhaps create a single unit that eliminates miscoordination. Regarding 2024, a year with fewer fires than the previous average, the burned area was more than double the five-year average. AGIF elegantly noted that the “operational response faced challenges in anticipation, communication, and resource mobilization” that “contributed to the spread of large-scale fires, especially in the North and Central Coast.”
He noted that “the response still presented some weaknesses, namely in the installed capacity to effectively manage several complex events simultaneously, aggravated by the incomplete management of rural areas, the need for more monitoring, especially in urban-rural interface areas, and also for more effective community safety programs.”
If we don’t want each summer to be just another endurance test, we must recognize that fires aren’t fought only in August. They’re fought in January, through land management, forest management, and team training. Without this, each year will be the same, only with more resources and more expenses—but also with more ash.