Fires in Italy.
Whole Europe is experiencing big temperatures and droughts. No exception is famous Italian Tuscany.
High temperatures caused drought or drought caused big temperatures?
Who caused drought?
People need to ask. Ask themeselves. Did we people caused drouhgts? Try to answer the question with next picture.
Why we try to get rid of single drop of the water which falls from the heaven? We don’t let it absorb, humid the soil and create water sources. We don’t let vaporise the rain but we quickly deliver it to the see. Single healthy leaf tree can vaporise 400 litres of water in one single day! Imagine forest. Can forest make rain? Yes it can
Desperation
We get rid of every single drop of water from the soil. Immediately after it touches the ground we send it to the sea. What we do when it is too late? We desparately try to bring it back with technologies our masterminds engineered. We forgot what we have learned. Single tree can evaporate hundred litres of water – when there is moisture in the soil.
The water which we rushed to the see is now missing in dried forest.
We were eager to get rid of water instead of proper water management and now we are bothered with fires from drought.
fire clouds
ash from fires in gardens
What is comming next
Even there is robust infrastructure in the region to get rid big amounts of rainwater it will be not big enough if storm hits big enough area of burned forests which completely lost its absorption capacity. Is that difficult to predict that what was barely enough when region tried to avoid floods with toboggans for rainwater will be not enough when absorption capacity of the land is almost zeroed? There will be floods. Every village which is first under burned areas is jeopardised by mud and floods in next bigger rain.
deepChannel
tobogganForRainwaterToTheVillage
bottlenecksOnTheBegginingOfVillage
bottleneck before Kindergarden!
bottleNeckInTheVillage
propertiesJeopardisedByPotentialMudFloods
floods are comming…
concrete flooded to the village causing enormous damage
No time to rest. Fire will end with rain.
After firefighters end their fight with fire they will be rescuing people and properties from floods and mud. That is one certainity for sure. So there is no time to rest.
What you need to expect? In forests big landslides caused by erosion gullies, in villages mud from these landslides.
Solution is simple. If you act immediately you can avoid next disaster.
During the fire you need to prepare strategic plan how to replace the absorption capacity of the burned forests. What will be costs, how much you need to do, what benefits it will bring.
Analyse affected area
First of all we need to understand the area. What happened to it and what are the possiblitites which can hit the region from historical data. We can prepare plan how to adopt on them and calculate cost and benefits of water retention meassures.
Retain every single drop from the top
After calculations are made you need to act quickly and retain water from the top of the watershed. Sometimes solutions are simple and excavator can do the job very quickly even in difficult terrain.
Stabilise erosion gullies
Rainfalls comming to the burned area will cause deeper and deeeper erosion gullies. Slopes will become unstable. Professional forestry engineers can build quickly structures from local material which will stabilise slopes and prevent erosion