Jul 13, 2015

5th of July

Jüterbog. 105 ha of forests burned on 5 July south of Berlin on an ex-army training site. The area is covered with Unexploded Ordnance UXO which makes fire suppression very dangerous for fire services. The UXO in this area tend to self-ignite in warmer temperatures and under direct sunlight. The old grenades corrode away and if containing phosphorus, the self-ignition can happen.
Due to the UXO contamination,  the land owner (NLB Stiftung Brandenburg) decided to be proactive and developed with "Working on Fire Europe WoF Europe" a fire protection concept. This concept did a risk analysis on the 9 000 ha area and developed a fire buffer zone concept, according to risk levels, fuel loads and expected fire behaviour.
The local fire service can now work with these control lines and buffer zones and apply a containment rather than a suppression strategy. This strategy also reduces number of personnel and fire trucks, therefore saving enormous costs.

On 5 July the fire service did just that. According to the Incident Commander, they were using the fire buffer zones and fire breaks to monitor the fire spread and only became active where the fire threatened to cross the control lines in place. The buffer zones are cleared from UXO and the fire service can operate in a much safer way. For Germany this is quite a new wildfire strategy. The land owner expressed his relief that this time, the control of the wildfire was relatively stressfree.

press links (in German):

http://www.maz-online.de Lokales/Teltow-Flaeming/Naturschutzgebiet-in-Jueterbog-geraet-in-Brand-Feuerwehr-ist-13-Stunden-im-Einsatz

http://www.maz-online.de/Lokales/Teltow-Flaeming/Auf-dem-alten-Schiessplatz-in-Jueterbog-sind-binnen-wenger-Tage-zwei-Feuer-ausgebrochen