In the summer of 2005, amidst the region’s worst drought in six decades, wildfires sparked across the forests of northern Portugal. By August 6, more than 2,000 firefighters were tackling two dozen fires across the country. Over the next three weeks, increasing temperatures—up to 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius)—and strong winds further fueled the blazes, the largest of which spanned 13 miles.

With its modest firefighting resources tapped out, the Portuguese government called on its European neighbors for help. France and Spain sent in firefighting planes, while Germany and Holland each sent several helicopters. At the peak of burning, close to 800 firetrucks and 31 airplanes and helicopters were in use.

By the end of August, the air humidity rose, temperatures fell and the major fires were put to rest. But the damage had been done. All told, fires had scorched more than 741,000 acres of forest land, destroying more than 100 homes and 500 farm buildings. A total of 13 Portuguese civilians and 10 firefighters died.

As devastating as Portugal’s 2005 summer was, fires of that magnitude are nothing new, and are becoming increasingly frequent all over the world. In 2000, an estimated 865 million acres of forests and woodlands were destroyed by fire, with 80 percent found in the ultra-dry savannas of sub-Saharan Africa and the islands of the southwest Pacific, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. In 2004, a whopping 4.2 million acres burned in the most northern forest of the Yukon Territory, and another 6.7 million acres in neighboring Alaska. Russia’s 2007 fire season saw almost 14,000 fires, damaging more than 2 million acres. As for the continental United States, last year the explosive spree of fires in Southern California alone burned more than 1.3 million acres.

How do governments handle such a large-scale disaster? Forty years ago, the universal fire management strategy was to prevent as many fires as possible; and for those that started anyway, to suppress them.

That all changed around 1970, when scientists realized that fire is most often a natural and healthy part of forest ecology and should sometimes be permitted. “Before, the agencies’ mentality was to put everything out as soon as it starts and as quickly as you can,” explains Tory Henderson, branch chief for equipment and chemicals for the U.S. Forest Service. “The biggest change in the last 20 years is how we’ve learned to use fire to benefit the ecosystem.”

Today, a large, international network of fire managers studies the climate and ecological conditions under which to set controlled fires. They also design sophisticated mathematical models to predict when and where the big fires will rage. They use high-tech satellite systems and gadgets that spot actual fires in real time. And if they determine that a fire should be squelched, they send in skilled firefighting troops by air and by land to put out the flames before they destroy acres of vulnerable terrain.

Still, none of these technologies by themselves can put fires to rest. As Marty Alexander, longtime fire behavior researcher in the Canadian Forest Service, says: “At the end of the day, it’s still the guy on the ground, with a shovel and an ax, who’s doing the real work.”

…read the rest of my latest article in BOSS
…or my related piece in Popular Mechanics