Insurance and forest fire resilience in Chamusca, Portugal
In 2003 fires burnt nearly 22,000 ha of the Portuguese municipality of Chamusca and killed four people; the case study analysed what drove them and how insurance could support recovery and prevention.
- Region: the municipality of Chamusca, Portugal
- Hazard: forest fire and wildfire
- Period: the fires of 2003 and their aftermath
- Partners as printed: Municipality of Chamusca, CPA, ACHAR (landowners association), Altri (Pulp & Paper), Chamusca Firefighters Corporations, DRF-LVT (Regional Forest Services), Civil Protection Authority, Empremédia, and ISA, University of Lisbon, with Maria da Conceição Colaço as contact
The fires of 2003 burnt nearly 22,000 ha in Chamusca, about 30 percent of the municipality, and killed four people, two of them firefighters. The case study looked back at those fires with hindsight: what drove them, and what the policies adopted afterwards changed.
Several methods were combined:
- surveys on how effective the policies had been, on changes in local practice and on risk perception;
- a study of resilience in the wildland-urban interface, where houses meet forest;
- scenarios of how different choices on prevention and firefighting could have changed the outcome in 2003;
- forest insurance models for the region.
The partner list mixes the municipality, firefighters, regional forest services and civil protection with a landowners’ association and a pulp and paper company, so private owners and users of the forest sat alongside the public bodies. The work drew on earlier EU projects, FIREPARADOX and EUFIRELAB, and on the PHOENIX COST Action.
Chamusca was one of the cases in the ENHANCE working paper on novel and improved insurance instruments. The other ENHANCE cases are in the case-study atlas.