Experts from 10 countries discuss measures against erosion and forest fires

Experts from more than 10 countries working in the area of prevention of forest fires on October 10 visited the Southwestern State Enterprise in Blagoevgrad, South Bulgaria. Their goal was to learn more about the work of the teams in managing the big fire in Bulgaria’s Kresna Gorge, which broke out two years ago and affected more than 14,000 decares of forests.

At a two-day conference in Sofia, scientists and researchers from different European countries shared their experience of responding to and extinguishing forest fires. The aim is to prepare, in the next four years, a new single European directive on soil erosion and forest fire prevention.

Assoc. Prof. Nina Dobrinkova, Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences: South-West Bulgaria was selected as a good practice that we want to show to our colleagues from Catalonia, Spain, Portugal. We have French, we have Czech, Polish experts. These countries do not have experience in forest fires, they have fires mostly in populated areas. We are organising a series of meetings in the next 4 years, with the first meeting in Bulgaria with one main idea to show how to react to forest fires in transborder zones.

The participants in the event visited the Centre for Analysis and Control of the Fire Situation, which was built four years ago in the building of the Southwest Enterprise in Blagoevgrad, where the fire in in the Kresna Gorge was identified.

Kamila from the Czech Republic: You have an extremely useful and modern system that monitors the forest situation in real time. And you also work very well in extinguishing fires.

The restoration of the forests in Kresna Gorge continues. In the next four years, the Southwestern State Enterprise will completely repair the damage by afforesting 6,000 decares of coniferous and deciduous forests.