By Trevor Howard
With increasing frequency and severity, we are seeing large-scale wildfires and cascading consequences across the globe. In the 2026 summer fire season in Europe, major conflagrations occurred in Mediterranean and southern regions with lives and properties lost across Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Belgium, and Turkey. Albania, Germany and other countries have been affected, and the potential remains for more widespread conflagrations. Further north, Ireland and the United Kingdom had wildfires of a scale and complexity well beyond the historic norm.
These wildfires were preceded by periods of rainfall and growth in vegetation in some areas while prolonged drought occurred in others, followed by significant and widespread heatwaves disrupting European economies and lifestyles and baking landscapes and vegetation.
This From the IAWF President column is first published in Wildfire Magazine – read the full edition.
Across the Atlantic, Canada again experienced extensive wildfires in several provinces, impacting populated areas, remote and Indigenous communities, and vulnerable boreal forests. Over the border, the United States experienced a similar situation of escalating wildfire commitments and impacts, with many parts of the country in a state of high risk even if ignitions have not occurred. As with Europe, properties and lives have been lost including fire crews and aviators. Indonesia, along with other parts of Asia, is dealing with major wildfire threats and impacts. Across all fire affected countries and continents, smoke accumulations and greenhouse gas emissions are disrupting more distant places as well as atmospheric dynamics. This situation is unsustainable.
Formal instruments for cross-border and international assistance have been activated, including mutual response and coordination agreements within the European Union, and longstanding resource sharing arrangements among Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada for firefighters and incident management teams. Such agreements require many issues to be addressed including training, experience and qualifications, fitness standards, deployment conditions, fatigue and safety management, national polices and cost recovery. Even for well-established relationships – e.g. between Australia and the United States – cross-walking processes to align roles, skills, competencies and training continue to be reviewed and refined each year so the expectations of resource providers and recipients are met when firefighters and incident management personnel are deployed.
The United Nations Global Fire Management Hub (UN Fire Hub), formed under the Food and Agriculture Organisation headquartered in Rome, established an Interoperability Working Group in 2025 that is tackling many current and emerging issues and making good progress. However, these challenges will be with us for a very long time and at different scales in different places. While some countries have relatively mature wildfire response and management arrangements, others are yet to develop, especially where large wildfires are a relatively recent phenomenon and fire services are localised rather than national.
Many of the interoperability issues go well beyond high-level agreements, intelligence and data sharing, and the like. Metropolitan fire services are generally organised, trained and equipped for structural fires, while forestry and park services have different cultures, equipment and skillsets for dealing with fires in vegetation. In some countries the military is involved, while the aerial firefighting sector also involves many corporations and private-public partnerships. The ability for different agencies and organisations to work together in planning and preparedness, and to establish command and control, develop operational strategies and tactics, deploy resources including aircraft for effectiveness and efficiency, and ensure the safety and wellbeing of their personnel, can be a significant challenge. This coordination requires mutual respect, communication at all levels, a common operating picture, training and exercising together, the ability to recognize and use specialist skills regardless of service or rank, and often long-term cultural change within each organisation.
Fundamentally, wildfires occur in vegetation. The point of origin may be remote and in difficult terrain. Directly applying water to burning materials from hoses and trucks, as in metropolitan contexts with reticulated water supplies and hydrants, will only ever be practical at small scales, in accessible areas, and for the protection of built assets. Hose lays and sprinkler systems can be effective for protecting landscape features of significant value, especially in difficult terrain where water sources such as collar tanks (or flexitanks) can be inserted by helicopter, and water remains useful for mopping up smouldering materials. Aerial firefighting, whether dropping water and suppressants on the fire edge, or retardants on unburnt vegetation, will always be limited by scale, cost, aircraft availability and proximity to refilling points. Even dry fire fighting, involving managing fuels using hand tools and earthmoving machinery to cut mineral breaks, separate areas of flammable vegetation, and create access for vehicles, has many constraints. While rapid fire detection and multi-agency emergency response are essential, as well as international and continental mutual-aid agreements, there will never be enough firefighters, water, trucks, aircraft and earthmoving equipment. Modern building standards and materials are also essential but do very little for historic towns, older suburbs, remote communities and disadvantaged populations.
As global fire regimes change and conflagrations have bigger impacts, the lessons to be learned and the strategies needed are old, not new. The use of fire for strategic and tactical backburns, and to burn out fuels between constructed or natural breaks and the wildfire edge, remains a powerful tool for fire fighting in the right hands, but can be a significant risk without expert judgment and skills. Beyond fire fighting, the use of fire in the landscape for prescribed burning is essential for managing vegetation and fuels at a range of scales, as well as for learning and development so that firefighters and managers acquire a practical understanding of fire behaviour. After successive unsustainable wildfire seasons in Canada, there is now a national prescribed fire training program that is expanding its focus and program delivery nationwide. The UN Fire Hub is also actively promoting Integrated Fire Management so that all aspects of living with and managing fire in the landscape are given prominence, including prescribed burning and land management. To protect life, property and the environment from wildfires, we need to better manage the environment before wildfires start.
Trevor Howard is the President of the IAWF and national manager, prescribed burning strategy, with the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council (AFAC).