Fighting fire with innovation: a pan-European push to tackle extreme wildfires

EU-funded researchers, firefighters and communities are pioneering innovative, collaborative approaches to build landscapes able to withstand increasingly extreme wildfires.

By Maria Vlastara

Asier Larrañaga Ochoa de Eguileor, a wildfire analyst at the Catalan Fire and Rescue Service, experienced the Solsonès wildfire in Spain in 1998 and still remembers it as a revelation.

“I had basic fire theory training, but what I saw on the ground didn’t match any of it. Fires were jumping over valleys.