Forest Fires in Europe - 2006

This is the seventh “Forest Fires in Europe” EFFIS report published by the European Commission. The report is normally published in summer of the following year in order to allow the different countries to compile official statistics of the fire season regarding the total number of forest fires and burned area. The fire season of 2006 can be defined as a relatively mild season, and if the total number of fires was still relatively high, the total burned area was definitely well below the average. In general there were not many extreme fire events and only the large fires that devastated Galicia (Spain) in the first two weeks of August, were object of great concern. This lead Spain to request assistance through the European Civil Protection Co-operation Mechanism with its Monitoring and Coordination Centre coordinating the offer of help of many European countries that supplied human and aerial fire-fighting means to Galicia.