2021 witnessed large fire disasters. In recent years, wildfires have led to serious social, economic, and ecological results not only in Türkiye, but also in different parts of the world. 12.6 million hectares (ha) of area was affected by Australia bushfires between August 2019 and March 20201. 4.1 million hectares of area was affected by fires in the US in 2020. In 2021, 370,000 hectares of area was affected by Dixie fires which broke out in California2. As of November 2021, 3 million hectares of forestland was affected by fires across Canada3. And as of September 2021, 53,800 ha in Italy, 22;800 ha in France, 18,000 ha in Romania, 25,500 ha in Bosnia-Herzegovina were affected by fires.4
2021 was a record year for Türkiye not in terms of the numbers of fires but the numbers of wildfires and area per fire 1937. And from 1937 to the end of 2020 a total of 1.8 million ha of area was affected by approximately 115,000 forest fires. The annual average for the areas affected by fires were 20,380 ha and area per fire were around 15 ha (Figure 1).
There were 123 forest fires with 500 ha and above across Türkiye between 1979 and 2020, and nearly 174,790 ha of area was affected. The share of these wildfires among the total fire outbreaks is approximately 0.1% which is a fairly low rate. However, the area that was affected by these fires constitutes 10% of the total burnt forestlands.
As of November 2021, in around 2,700 fires and 142,000 ha of area was affected. 117,000 ha forest area was burned between 28 July and 10 August as a result of 16 wildfires (500 ha and above). The area that was affected by wildfires constitute 83% of the total area that was affected by 2021 fires. The share of this area among the total forestlands that burned since 1937 is around 8%.
Eight people died; thousands of decares of agricultural lands, tourism facilities, and residential areas were ruined; and thousands of animals died due to wildfires across the country.
Fire response was carried out with 16 firefighting aircrafts, 65 helicopters, 9 drones, an unmanned helicopter, 850 fire trucks and water tankers, 430 heavy equipment, and 5,250 personnel. Most countries including Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Russia, Spain, Croatia, Qatar, and Iran provided personnel and vehicle support.
The 2021 fire season was very different from past years in terms of both fire behavior and fire response. We had to respond to multiple large fires simultaneously. This situation led to numerous organizational, coordination, and logistics problems or it became the root of the problem itself. Aside from the fire response organization; logistics support, inter-institutional cooperation, coordination and disaster management failures were observed. To prevent these problems from happening again, programs on disaster management in fire need to be improved.
Causes of Fire
There are approximately 22.9 million ha of forestlands in Türkiye.5 A bit more than half of these forestlands are located in the areas that are vulnerable to fire. Between 1937 when fire statistics were officially started to be recorded and the end of 2020, in almost 115,000 official fires, 1.8 million ha of forestlands were affected by fires. Including 2021, burnt areas reached 1.95 million ha.6
Fires in our forests were caused by human activity, and the remaining 3-5% by a natural phenomenon such as lightning7 12-15% of fires caused by human activity were arson, and more than half of all fires stemmed from negligence and carelessness. It can be said that 2021 fires were in line with the statistics.
If we analyze fires in Türkiye, we can see that underlying causes of forest fires are social, economic, and cultural.
Traditionally, our people burn stubbles in lands, clean banana, hazelnut and tea fields by burning wastes, and use fire to have a picnic. These actions may result in fire if the fire risk in the area is high.8
We can say that these socio-economic and cultural causes of fire are quite important for fire management planning.
In this context, fire management plans plans related to fire prevention measures, fire preparedness, and fire response should be created with a consideration of social, economic, and cultural needs and expectations of target groups living in areas that are vulnerable to fire. Otherwise the success rate of the implementation of plans would be low.
How do Fires Become Disasters?
Combustible materials, fire weather, and topographic features are the most important factors affecting fire behavior. Assuming that topographic features are stable in the course of time, we can say that the most important elements affecting fire in the course of time are combustible materials and fire weather.
The amount of combustible materials in our forests are increasing day after. The reason behind this is the heavypopulation movements from rural areas to urban areas for the past 20-30 years, decline in livestock industry, and the fact that the use of natural gas for daily use, causing to reduce social pressure on forests. Large-scale reforestation,, rehabilitation and maintenance activities, and forestation campaigns conducted by the General Directorate of Forestry caused the area of forestlands to increase. As a consequence, build up and continuity of combustible materials in forests significantly increased. This increase in combustible materials lead up to fires to break out, get bigger, expand, and to become dangerous.9
Apart from all these, the damage caused by fire increased especially because of people building new residential areas close to forests in holiday destinations, and the fact that fire preparedness is quite inadequate in tourism facilities in coastal regions and in-forest residential areas. As we can see by analyzing 2021 fires; evacuated residential areas, burnt houses, tourism facilities, and greenhouse areas are the result of that. It would not be wrong to say that if necessary measures are not taken, much larger scale catastrophes are inevitable.
Significant accomplishments on fire response have been made in Türkiye especially in recent years. These accomplishments are a result of the hard-work of all fire staff from firefighters to fire wardens and people’s awareness of wildfires and the love of forests. The increasing use of technological advancements also have their share in these accomplishments. However, it should be stated that effective fire response does not remove the fire risk altogether. The resources allocated and care given to fire response activities should also be allocated and given to fire prevention and fire preparedness activities.
Unusual fire weather due to climate change is another reason why fires are occurring more often and becoming disastrous. Fires can break out and spread easily with rising temperatures rising because of the arrival of summer, lowering relative humidity of air, drying out of grasses and combustible materials rapidly losing moisture.10 It is so much easier for fires to break out and spread especially in windy weathers. There is a strong correlation between pre-fire weather, and 2021 forest fires becoming disasters which affected very wide areas in short notice. Cold and dry winds blowing from north to south gained speed and created storm scale air currents due to big temperature differences between north (inland regions) and south/west (Mediterranean/Aegean) regions after heavy rainfalls affected northern regions of Türkiye, and caused flood disasters before 28 July. Due to heavy north-east wind, relative humidity of air decreased under 10% and dead organic material on the forest floor became even drier. The decrease of moisture content of combustible materials below 10% means that combustible material would ignite easily and fire would spread really fast. Magnitude and damage of the fire reached to an unimaginable extent, due to the fact that the wind was too dry (north-east-wind in Mediterranean/Aegean Region), and too fast, and also the land topography was rugged. The forest fires disaster that occurred in Türkiye between 28 July – 10 August exactly indicates this situation.
Wide areas of forestlands continue to be affected by fires despite the fact that Türkiye has logistics opportunities, resources, infrastructure, and advanced technologies needed for forest fire prevention, detection, and response. The reason behind this is the relationship between climate, vegetation, and fire. Especially short-term disparities in climate parameters (fire weather) can take fire behavior to a very dangerous state. It is estimated that uncertainty in climate parameters and fire weather will take place more often in the future, which shows the seriousness of the situation.
How to Respond to a Fire?
Fire response begins with “prevention measures,” and then “preparedness measures” to minimize damages in possible fires. Current fire policies created with an understanding that overlooks the impact of fire on the ecosystem and prioritizes fire response.11 Although forest fires have economically and ecologically destructive impacts; structure, composition, and functions of ecosystems are dependent on fire regimes in fire-dependent ecosystems. Ecosystem services (our expectations from ecosystems) are dependent on structure, composition, and functions of ecosystems.
Fire regime essentially consists of five components; frequency, intensity, fuel consumption, magnitude, and fire season.12 Current fire policies have been developed with an understanding that overlooks the impact of fire on the ecosystem and prioritizes fire response.13
With global climate change; land use and changes in land use may affect fire regime, and lead to significant changes in natural ecosystem structures. In the case that probable climate scenarios become real, it can be estimated that there will be an increase in numbers and frequencies of fire in places where fires are often seen; and there will be an increase in big and destructive fires with the increasing numbers of fires in places where fires are not seen often. However, the numbers and continuity of combustible materials are high.14 Therefore, plans related to fire should be developed with a consideration of social, economic, and ecological aspects.
Fire response is a technical and administrative issue. Fire response strategies are mostly determined by fire behavior. Within the scope of technical opportunities, fire can be brought under control when the wind speed is 20-25 km/h. However, when the wind speed is above 30 km/h, the course of fire is controlled only by the wind independently of combustible materials. This was the case for the 28 July – 10 August fires that occurred under the control of high temperature, low relative humidity, and 40-45 km/h wind speeds. These kinds of fires cannot be controlled with any technical opportunity, or response strategies. And it may not be possible even at low wind speeds if decreases below 7%. Fire under these conditions response needs to be regarded as protection from fire and taking measures to protect important places and resources by classifying these fires as fires that cannot be responded until conditions change. Measures related to safety of life and property should be prioritized in such situations.
Especially wildfire response options should be assessed in terms of fire behavior potential, and fire response strategies should be determined accordingly. Current fire intensity classes (very low, low, moderate, high, very high) 15 16 can be reviewed, and the“very high” class can be divided into two categories as “controllable” and “uncontrollable.” It is very important to implement such decision support systems as “Fire Danger Rating System” in order for fire behavior potential to be properly and timely submitted to decision makers.17
What to do in Burnt Areas Following a Fire?
Half of the terrestrial ecosystems in the world are affected by fires one way or the other. Half of these ecosystems consist of fire-dependent ecosystems. Maquis (shrub) ecosystems, some pine (e.g. Turkish red pine) ecosystems of the Mediterranean climate of which Türkiye is a part; Africa, South America, and Australian savanna and shrub ecosystems set an example for fire-dependent ecosystems. In these ecosystems fire is a necessity for the continuity of species, along with the structure, composition, and functions of ecosystems. Suppressing fire and changing fire regime may lead to irrecoverable structural damages (stand, structure, composition, and alteration of species) in these kinds of ecosystems.
In fire-dependent ecosystems, a vast majority of areas return to forest regimes naturally and the ecosystem restores itself in a few years after the fire. There might be short-term problems with rejuvenation in some areas if the fire intensity is too high. As in the case of 2008 Serik-Taşağıl forest fire area, there might be erosion problems in large-scale fires. Turkish red pine and maquis species throughout these areas have considerable fire resistance mechanisms. These species show critical life events that align with the tendency to return to the area after fire and fire regime. These features of these species make it easier for them to return to burnt areas, or even guarantees it. In these kinds of areas, it is quite possible to save burnt areas and bring them back to the forest regime with basic protection measures.
However, fires greatly affect many ecosystems that are not fire-dependent but that witness too many fires. While too intense, early, and large-scale fires might lead to fatal results for these ecosystems; we know that fires contribute to seed germination and sapling growth and development especially in old stands of some species that constitute even-aged, single layered and pure stand. Even-aged, pure black pine and the scots pine stands in Türkiye, and natural ecosystems -where some pine species are dominant- sets an example for this.
Conclusion
Even though forest fires are an integral part of fire-dependent ecosystems, changes in fire regime may cause destructions and millions of Turkish liras of response and damage restoration costs, and even losses of lives and properties not only in ecosystems that are vulnerable to fire, but also in fire-dependent ecosystems. Our geographical location is destined to witness forest fires. Aside from being an earthquake prone country, Türkiye is also a forest fire prone country. We should acknowledge the reality of fire and look for ways to live with it. Therefore, it is necessary to reevaluate fire policies. Current fire policies prioritize fire response. Even though fire response is an important part of fire management plans, “fire prevention” plans, and “fire preparedness” plans are as equally important as fire response plans. Fire response activities can be regarded as activities aiming to rescue a vehicle that got into an accident and to rescue casualties inside the vehicle. But the main goal should be to prevent the accident from happening in the first place. In case of accident there should be things to do to minimize the severity of the damage:
- Fire policies and strategies should be revised and pre-fire plans should be prioritized as much as fire response plans.
- Fire plans should be based upon a scientific foundation.
- Planned activities should be supported with special funds.
- Decision support systems such as “Fire Danger Rating System” that will be at the service of decision makers should be implemented as soon as possible.
- The use of fire as a tool in disaster response should be extended, and necessary applied training programs should be created.
- Fire action plans should be created with the participation and contribution of all shareholders in the relevant fields.
- Fire action plans for areas that are located in interface of forest, forest/residential area, forest/agricultural land, forest/tourism regions should be designed on expertise and implementations should be monitored.
1. Wintle, B.A., Legge, S. ve Woinarski, J.C.Z. (2020). After the Megafires: what next for Australian Wildlife? Trends in Ecology & Evolution,35, 753–757
Reference ↑
2. National Interagency Fire Center. (2021). National Fire News. https://www.nifc.gov/
Reference ↑
3. Natural Resources Canada (2021) Canadian National Fire Database. https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/ha/nfdb
Reference ↑
4. EFFIS. (2022). European Forest Fire Information System. https://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/
Reference ↑
5. Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, General Directorate of Forestry (2021). Orman Genel Müdürlüğü, 2020 yılı ormancılık istatistikleri. https://www.ogm.gov.tr/tr/ormanlarimiz/resmi-istatistikler.
Reference ↑
6. Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, General Directorate of Forestry (2021). Tarım ve Orman Bakanlığı, Orman Genel Müdürlüğü, 2020 yılı orman yangınlarıyla mücadele değerlendirme raporu. https://www.ogm.gov.tr/tr/e-kutuphanesitesi/YanginYonetimPlanlari/AntalyaOBMManavgat%20Yang%C4%B1n%20Y%C3%B6netim%20Plan%C4%B1.pdf
Reference ↑
7. Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, General Directorate of Forestry (2021). Orman Genel Müdürlüğü, 2020 yılı ormancılık istatistikleri. https://www.ogm.gov.tr/tr/ormanlarimiz/resmi-istatistikler
Reference ↑
8. Bilgili, E. (1997). Forests and forest fires in Turkey. International Forest Fire News, 17, 15-21
Reference ↑
9. Keeley, J. E., Aplet, G. H., Christensen, N. L., Conard, S. C., Johnson, E. A., Omi, P. N. ve Swetnam, T. W. (2009). Ecological foundations for fire management in North American forest and shrubland ecosystems. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-779. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station
Reference ↑
10. Küçük, Ö. ve Sağlam, B. (2004). Orman yanginlari ve hava hâlleri / Forest fires and fire weather. Kastamonu Üniversitesi Orman Fakültesi Dergisi, 4(2), 220-231.
Reference ↑
11. Baysal, İ. (2014). Orman yangınlarının orman amenajman planlarına entegrasyonu (PhD thesis). Karadeniz Teknik University, Social Sciences Institute
Reference ↑
12. Bilgili, E. ve Baysal, İ. (2012). Yangın rejimi ve ormancılıktaki önemi. Orman Mühendisliği Dergisi, 49, 20-25
Reference ↑
13. Bilgili, E., Küçük, Ö., Sağlam, B., Dinç Durmaz, B., Baysal, İ. ve Coşkuner, K. A. (2021). Türkiye orman ekosistemlerinde yangınların ekolojik rolü. B. Pakdemirli, Ö. Küçük, Z. Bayraktar, S.Takmaz (Eds), Ekoloji ve Ekonomi Ekseninde Türkiye’de Orman ve Ormancılık içinde (75-115). Sonçağ Akademi
Reference ↑
14. Coşkuner, K. A. (2021). Doğu Karadeniz orman yangınlarının uzun dönem meteorolojik parametrelerle değerlendirilmesi. Doğal Afetler ve Çevre Dergisi, 7(2), s. 374-381. doi:https://doi.org/10.21324/dacd.885384.
Reference ↑
15. TOVAG. (2015). Türkiye Orman Yangın Tehlike Oranları Sistemi (TOYTOS)’ne doğru. Bölüm II: Meteorolojik Yangın İndeksi Sistemi (TOVAG 112O809). Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştırma Kurumu (TÜBİTAK) Proje Sonuç Raporu
Reference ↑
16. TOVAG. (2021). Web Tabanlı Yangın Davranışı Tahmin Sistemi (YDTWEB). Türkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Araştırma Kurumu (TÜBİTAK) Project Result Report
Reference ↑
17. Coşkuner, K. A. ve Bilgili, E. (2020). Orman yangın yönetiminde etkili bir karar destek sisteminin kavramsal çerçevesi. Doğal Afetler ve Çevre Dergisi, 6(2), 288-303. https://doi.org/10.21324/dacd.645701
Reference ↑