PH
Preventing wildfires through controlled burning of shrubs in at-risk areas is an impractical way to protect cities from fire, according to South Africa’s firefighters.
Members of the Cape Peninsula Fire Protection Association have clashed with scientists over how best to prevent large-scale wildfires after a March blaze devastated parts of South Africa’s Table Mountain National Park near Cape Town. Over the 13 days it raged before being brought under control, the fire burned nearly 7,000 hectares of park land.
Scientists looking after the park have said that backburning – the practice of burning selected areas of local scrubland to prevent the build-up of dry plant matter – should be reinstated to avoid future fires. But firefighters involved in tackling the March blaze say this is too risky.
“Scientists have no operational experience,” says Philip Prins, fire manager for Table Mountain National Park and chairman of the Cape Peninsula Fire Protection Association. “This park lies in an urban environment. We can’t take any chances. We would be liable.”
Backburning was widely used in South Africa until the 1980s. But new laws then made controlled burning more complicated as park administrators had to obtain permits for smoke pollution and insurance against fire damage to property in case fires got out of control.
“The consequence is that the inevitable wildfire occurs under very dangerous conditions,” says Brian van Wilgen, a scrubland researcher at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. “[This is] doing far more damage and generating far more smoke than prescribed burns.”
