The Italian National Fire and Rescue Service Activity in Forest Fires: The Event in Montegrino Valtravaglia

Abstract

Every year forest fires spread through the Italian territory causing huge damage to the community and hard consequences on the environment. The fight against this kind of events is one of the purposes of the Italian Fire and Rescue Service (CNVVF), which consists on the extinguishing operations supervision and on the direct extinguishing in case of forest fires involving built environment. In order to achieve increasingly accurate and effective rescue actions, it is therefore essential to conduct a critical analysis and review of the operations in the case of complex real interventions. This action is preparatory to the proper identification of critical issues and problems that are not directly identifiable and solvable during the intervention phase, where the urgent and non-deferrable nature of rescue activities requires swift planning and rapid actions. Managing tools such as the Incident Command System (ICS) well-known in literature and implemented within the CNVVF’s organizations with the Note n. 01/2020, provide a useful guide and a valid breakdown of operational actions, facilitating both for the intervention phase and for its subsequent analysis.

Therefore, the paper will focus the events occurred within the Montegrino mountain area, developed at the end of March 2023. In detail, reference will be made to the rescue management models adopted, to the cooperation between the difference state corps and authority intervened, to the role of the national air fleet in the extinguishing and eventually to the use of the innovative drone monitoring techniques in rescue services.