When you find yourself in front of a fire, you have to think about three
things: escape routes, wind, what you can save. ---- After having
reported to the competent authorities and having realized that perhaps
they won't come, because in the meantime, in other areas, there is a
deeper hell, then you arm yourself with good patience, with a firebreak,
a backpack on your shoulder with 20 liters of water, good equipment and
a lot of rationality, and together with the other friends of the MAI
Extinguishing group you challenge the flames.
Objective? Save as many trees as possible and limit, intervene so that
the fire does not spread too much, be it in areas of environmental and
naturalistic value or in areas close to all those who in one way or
another are part of the MAI Neighborhood networks .
The heat cooks your skin. Smoking clouds your brain. You breathe in
apnea. Little time to think. Too much time to consume the air we breathe.
The volunteers of the Ibleo Fire Fighting Movement, of the Extinguishing
group, experience all this every time. Every time they intervene.
On any Sunday, now in a period that lasts all year long, you can be out
and about, inside the Iblean quarries or near the houses for up to
eighteen hours at a time.
We witness scenes of pure panic!
Inhabitants of the houses near the fire scared and discouraged. Fire is
scary! Especially at night. And when night falls, the lights of the
embers lit, cemeteries of living beings, who will suffer tomorrow,
asphyxiated.
Flashes of blaze, another wise old olive tree leaving this Earth.
There is little to be discouraged, to resign, there is no time to cry,
you have to put aside anger and fear to do everything possible, hoping
to save another tree.
The MAI, Iblean Fire Prevention Movement, was born from a group of
citizens who, after a large fire that involved the Iblean hills in the
municipalities of Noto and Avola, province of Syracuse, in August 2020,
decided to self-organize to try to protect themselves with mutual aid
practices in times of emergency, to communicate with the relevant
institutions to ensure that the laws already in force are respected and
prevention practices are promoted, to raise awareness of environmental
issues related to fires. After several discussion and organization
meetings, a structure was reached in thematic working groups: shutdown,
relations with institutions, reforestation, prevention, culture and
awareness-raising, communication.
These groups have worked side by side to date producing substantial
results which have been taken as an example by other groups spread
across Sicily.
We have always analyzed the solutions we can implement to ensure that it
doesn't happen again, or at least reduce the damage caused by fires:
preventing by cleaning the land, patrolling like sentinels, reporting to
the competent authorities, self-organising in solidarity networks of
neighbors, in spontaneous committees, cleaning up afterwards all
incendiary events, report every time, against unknown persons, to alert
the bodies responsible for the investigations, reforest with awareness
actions, spontaneous events, flash mobs, interventions in schools.
Then there is the institutional political plan that can promote
prevention and investigations to find the causes and culprits of this
environmental disaster: hope for a collaboration network between
Municipalities, forestry, Fire Brigade, civil protection, associations,
free citizens; a serious negotiation for foresters, who monitor and
intervene in the preventive field with maintenance and cleaning.
Finally, we can also approach it in a global way: for example, establish
the crime of terrorist attack against humanity, nationalize the air
fleets responsible for putting out fires, make efficient and
preventative maintenance of emergency vehicles in burnt lands as well as
prohibiting any type of lucrative use such as grazing or the
construction of any type of private or commercial activity, only native
trees can be planted and new parks and reserves can be established.
What was certainly most successful as a bottom-up practice were
precisely the neighborhood and preventive patrol networks, also with the
task of timely sighting, the firefighting group and the process of
putting pressure on municipal and provincial institutions.
Neighborhood networks are groups of inhabitants who live in countryside
areas, even very large ones, gathered in a chat (now with 242 members),
who report the outbreak of fires, who intervene in the case of a small
fire on the roadside and who in the summer months, with high
temperatures, they patrol the main roads where brushwood triggers have
been observed over time, which are always the same. Furthermore, if
these networks have self-organized for the shutdown, they are also
autonomous in intervening.
The firefighting group, the intervention arm of the movement, is made up
of around ten volunteers who coordinate themselves to intervene safely,
near "MAI-friendly" places as a self-help group, or in areas of
particular environmental or naturalistic value . They have the freedom
to choose when and how to intervene, once on site they evaluate from
time to time how to act, also in collaboration with the rescue forces
present. Over time, relations with the rescue forces have become
increasingly fluid, taking care of communication. Be sure to go with the
equipment that is not used by the Forestry Corps and the Fire Brigade,
such as the firebreak and the 20 liter manual spray backpack, in less
accessible places. The group is made up of people who have had countless
experiences of fires near their properties over time.
The Relations with Institutions group has taken charge of implementing
strategies of interlocution and pressure on the municipalities in
question, on the provincial and regional bodies for management and
protection of the territory, trying to monitor and promote the
implementation of rules, regulations and laws already present in current
legislation to prevent and reduce the phenomenon of arson, negligent and
criminal fires.
From this wave that started 4 years ago, numerous spontaneous groups
have formed, both as a consequence of large fires such as those that hit
the areas of Palermo, and as a movement from below in areas strongly
subject to continuous medium-sized fires, such as the Syracuse Fire
Prevention Committee or the "Basta Roghi" movement. There are now many
self-organised groups operating in Sicily, a communication and
collaboration network is hoped for.
Are we getting used to it? Is everything normal now? The hair still
feels the heat, burned by flames, smoke, ash. A wound on my hand will
long remind me of a deeper one.
Hundreds of living beings that allow us to live tragically burned alive.
Now irony helps me face life, which in the last 4 years, since I became
a MAI volunteer, challenges me to be resilient. And I continue to love
this "fucking" piece of paradise. Despite it all. And you who have fun
every year, armed with who knows what intention, or even worse with who
knows what miserable interest, stop, ENOUGH! The day will come when your
son will run out of air, like mine.
Enough fire, Because neither you nor I will have water to drink. There
will be no animals or plants. We will live in a black desert.
Reason! Let's go together in a stubborn and contrary direction. In the
end we will be Earth. But I prefer it to be a land of life not death.
Vincenzo Spadaro - volunteer of the Spegnimento MAI group
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
things: escape routes, wind, what you can save. ---- After having
reported to the competent authorities and having realized that perhaps
they won't come, because in the meantime, in other areas, there is a
deeper hell, then you arm yourself with good patience, with a firebreak,
a backpack on your shoulder with 20 liters of water, good equipment and
a lot of rationality, and together with the other friends of the MAI
Extinguishing group you challenge the flames.
Objective? Save as many trees as possible and limit, intervene so that
the fire does not spread too much, be it in areas of environmental and
naturalistic value or in areas close to all those who in one way or
another are part of the MAI Neighborhood networks .
The heat cooks your skin. Smoking clouds your brain. You breathe in
apnea. Little time to think. Too much time to consume the air we breathe.
The volunteers of the Ibleo Fire Fighting Movement, of the Extinguishing
group, experience all this every time. Every time they intervene.
On any Sunday, now in a period that lasts all year long, you can be out
and about, inside the Iblean quarries or near the houses for up to
eighteen hours at a time.
We witness scenes of pure panic!
Inhabitants of the houses near the fire scared and discouraged. Fire is
scary! Especially at night. And when night falls, the lights of the
embers lit, cemeteries of living beings, who will suffer tomorrow,
asphyxiated.
Flashes of blaze, another wise old olive tree leaving this Earth.
There is little to be discouraged, to resign, there is no time to cry,
you have to put aside anger and fear to do everything possible, hoping
to save another tree.
The MAI, Iblean Fire Prevention Movement, was born from a group of
citizens who, after a large fire that involved the Iblean hills in the
municipalities of Noto and Avola, province of Syracuse, in August 2020,
decided to self-organize to try to protect themselves with mutual aid
practices in times of emergency, to communicate with the relevant
institutions to ensure that the laws already in force are respected and
prevention practices are promoted, to raise awareness of environmental
issues related to fires. After several discussion and organization
meetings, a structure was reached in thematic working groups: shutdown,
relations with institutions, reforestation, prevention, culture and
awareness-raising, communication.
These groups have worked side by side to date producing substantial
results which have been taken as an example by other groups spread
across Sicily.
We have always analyzed the solutions we can implement to ensure that it
doesn't happen again, or at least reduce the damage caused by fires:
preventing by cleaning the land, patrolling like sentinels, reporting to
the competent authorities, self-organising in solidarity networks of
neighbors, in spontaneous committees, cleaning up afterwards all
incendiary events, report every time, against unknown persons, to alert
the bodies responsible for the investigations, reforest with awareness
actions, spontaneous events, flash mobs, interventions in schools.
Then there is the institutional political plan that can promote
prevention and investigations to find the causes and culprits of this
environmental disaster: hope for a collaboration network between
Municipalities, forestry, Fire Brigade, civil protection, associations,
free citizens; a serious negotiation for foresters, who monitor and
intervene in the preventive field with maintenance and cleaning.
Finally, we can also approach it in a global way: for example, establish
the crime of terrorist attack against humanity, nationalize the air
fleets responsible for putting out fires, make efficient and
preventative maintenance of emergency vehicles in burnt lands as well as
prohibiting any type of lucrative use such as grazing or the
construction of any type of private or commercial activity, only native
trees can be planted and new parks and reserves can be established.
What was certainly most successful as a bottom-up practice were
precisely the neighborhood and preventive patrol networks, also with the
task of timely sighting, the firefighting group and the process of
putting pressure on municipal and provincial institutions.
Neighborhood networks are groups of inhabitants who live in countryside
areas, even very large ones, gathered in a chat (now with 242 members),
who report the outbreak of fires, who intervene in the case of a small
fire on the roadside and who in the summer months, with high
temperatures, they patrol the main roads where brushwood triggers have
been observed over time, which are always the same. Furthermore, if
these networks have self-organized for the shutdown, they are also
autonomous in intervening.
The firefighting group, the intervention arm of the movement, is made up
of around ten volunteers who coordinate themselves to intervene safely,
near "MAI-friendly" places as a self-help group, or in areas of
particular environmental or naturalistic value . They have the freedom
to choose when and how to intervene, once on site they evaluate from
time to time how to act, also in collaboration with the rescue forces
present. Over time, relations with the rescue forces have become
increasingly fluid, taking care of communication. Be sure to go with the
equipment that is not used by the Forestry Corps and the Fire Brigade,
such as the firebreak and the 20 liter manual spray backpack, in less
accessible places. The group is made up of people who have had countless
experiences of fires near their properties over time.
The Relations with Institutions group has taken charge of implementing
strategies of interlocution and pressure on the municipalities in
question, on the provincial and regional bodies for management and
protection of the territory, trying to monitor and promote the
implementation of rules, regulations and laws already present in current
legislation to prevent and reduce the phenomenon of arson, negligent and
criminal fires.
From this wave that started 4 years ago, numerous spontaneous groups
have formed, both as a consequence of large fires such as those that hit
the areas of Palermo, and as a movement from below in areas strongly
subject to continuous medium-sized fires, such as the Syracuse Fire
Prevention Committee or the "Basta Roghi" movement. There are now many
self-organised groups operating in Sicily, a communication and
collaboration network is hoped for.
Are we getting used to it? Is everything normal now? The hair still
feels the heat, burned by flames, smoke, ash. A wound on my hand will
long remind me of a deeper one.
Hundreds of living beings that allow us to live tragically burned alive.
Now irony helps me face life, which in the last 4 years, since I became
a MAI volunteer, challenges me to be resilient. And I continue to love
this "fucking" piece of paradise. Despite it all. And you who have fun
every year, armed with who knows what intention, or even worse with who
knows what miserable interest, stop, ENOUGH! The day will come when your
son will run out of air, like mine.
Enough fire, Because neither you nor I will have water to drink. There
will be no animals or plants. We will live in a black desert.
Reason! Let's go together in a stubborn and contrary direction. In the
end we will be Earth. But I prefer it to be a land of life not death.
Vincenzo Spadaro - volunteer of the Spegnimento MAI group
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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