Fire is a natural part of European landscapes both because of natural lightning
ignitions and by human activity for hunting, fighting or land management. However,
fire has recently started to be regarded as an economic and social problem. The
cost of fire suppression is higher than ever, and large fires are becoming larger,
with faster spread rates and higher fire intensities. The landscape is changing to a
continuous mosaic of fuels, as most small and medium-size fires are extinguished
as soon as they develop. The consequences of this fast growth in fire fighting
organizations only focused on fire suppression are increased fuel accumulation
and increased fuel continuity at the landscape level. As a result wildfires can
become non-containable and the proportion of area burned in such big wildfires
will continue to grow. During the past century, this problem has developed in
different ways throughout Europe. However, if we look at this problem from a
global perspective, we can only come to the conclusion that fire is becoming a more
important problem. There is a clear increase in the number and proportions of so
called megafires in countries such as Portugal, France, Spain, Italy, and Greece, but
even in England, Sweden and Norway large wildfires are occurring simultaneously.
The trend observed in Europe is that wildfires larger than 50 ha affect more than
75% of total surface burned in Europe (San-Miguel and Camia 2009).
Europe is now faced with a new fire-related problem all over the continent, and
trying to enforce a fire suppression policy is not going to solve the problem. In this
sense, suppression fire techniques are not only an opportunity to improve efficiency
to fight these large fires that are beyond the capacity of extinction, but they are also
linked to skillful, experienced and trained groups of fire specialists that are able to
introduce learning in organizations. The aim of this chapter is to explore the deep
changes in fire management organizations that are associated to the introduction
of suppression fire techniques, and this calls for new concepts not only in fire
management but also in organizational learning.