PRESS RELEASE
Firstly, from the Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTFC) and the FIRE-RES team, we would like to express our condolences to the families and friends of the victims of the Torrefeta and Florejacs wildfire in La Segarra.
On the 1st of July of 2025, a wildfire broke out in Segarra, killing two people, slightly injuring two firefighters, affecting an area of about 5,500 ha and burning a farmhouse, 2 sheds, 3 farms and a building. This wildfire had an extreme behaviour, with propagation speeds of up to 28 km/h (one of the highest ever recorded in Europe) and generating a 14 km high pyrocumulus and impacting an area 40 km long.
This wildfire took place in a landscape with little forest area, but where the cereal fields were about to be harvested or with the straw to be collected. The affected area is therefore a homogeneous landscape and remains very vulnerable during this harvesting period due to the large accumulation of straw and grass that the spring rains had made grow and were now dry.
The wildfire spread with extreme behaviour due to pyroconvection processes generated due to the large amount of energy released in a short time when the amount of fine fuel available was burning. The unstable atmosphere and the interaction with the two storm fronts also contributed to it. This same phenomenon has been observed and studied in Chile, Portugal, the Landes or California.
As a result of the developed pyroconvection and the interaction with the storms, the column of smoke was dense enough to have to confine the population in the 26,000 ha around the wildfire. In addition to the usual communication channels, the ES-ALERT system was used to warn the population of the situation and how to act (confinement). These guidelines for action and recommendations are key to creating the necessary risk awareness so that the population can collaborate with the management of the emergency itself.
The FIRE-RES project is a large European project led by the CTFC and with the participation of the Fire Department of the Generalitat and other entities of Catalonia, which focuses on the study of extreme wildfires in which phenomena such as those that have occurred in the Torrefeta and Florejacs wildfire occur, pyroconvection phenomena that include the coupling of fire with the atmosphere generating a pyrocumulus. The project’s main objectives are the development and implementation of innovations and solutions applied in large study areas throughout Europe and Chile. This scenario of extreme wildfires, uncertain in their development and difficult to predict, is becoming increasingly frequent due to climate change that has been manifesting itself unequivocally in recent years.
This wildfire highlights some of the CHALLENGES that were defined at the beginning of the project:
A mosaic landscape reduces the risk of extreme behaviours but does not eliminate them if it accumulates enough biomass to release the critical energy for pyroconvection phenomena in adverse environmental conditions. This accumulation and continuity of biomass could be reduced by increasing the diversification of forest and crop types.
The landscape is dynamic, and constant monitoring is necessary to identify risk situations. In the case of extreme wildfires, this involves monitoring the available biomass load that will be transformed into energy to feed pyroconvection processes.
Monitoring meteorological variables at the surface is not sufficient to anticipate risk situations. It is necessary to identify the key atmospheric variables that describe convection processes in the upper layers of the atmosphere to assess the risk of having extreme situations and monitor them.