The comprehensive project on adapting forests and forestry to climate change – preventing, counteracting and reducing the effects of fire hazards – firefighting 2 is a result of the high demand for preventive measures to protect forests against fires and to seek to minimise their negative effects. The main objective of the project is to improve the efficiency of the early warning, forecasting and rapid response system in the event of threats related to forest fires remaining on the board of PGL LP in the years 2024-2028. The specific objectives are: 1. Increasing the forest area covered by monitoring through the construction, reconstruction and renovation of fire detectors; 2. Efficiently locate the source of the hazard by means of a monitoring system, covering forest areas as well as outside forests; 3. Improved accuracy forecasting of fire hazard based on meteorological data; 4. Effectively starting firefighting with the participation of technically efficient, modern equipment through the purchase of patrol and firefighting cars; 5. Increase the availability of water supply sites, useful for reducing, spreading, extinguishing and extinguishing forest fires through the construction, reconstruction and refurbishment of water abstraction points. In order to achieve these objectives, the project will implement actions aimed at increasing the possibilities of preventing and counteracting fire risks, as well as responding to and reducing their effects. To this end, support will be provided for: • development and modernisation of early warning and threat forecasting systems, including: construction, reconstruction and renovation of fire detectors; construction and modernisation of masts; on which equipment for the identification and location of fires is placed; construction and retrofitting of meteorological stations; purchase of modern equipment enabling identification and location of fires and retrofitting of Alarm and Dispatch Points -PAD (fire location system). • technical support of the firefighting and rescue system in the event of forest fires, including: purchase of patrol and firefighting vehicles, construction, reconstruction and renovation of water draw-off points. In the area of fire protection, only the most important activities were selected for implementation under the project, resulting from the analysis of needs reported by forest districts, conditioning the maintenance of high efficiency of the fire protection system in LP. The development of a comprehensive fire protection and prevention system will result in an increase in forest areas covered by monitoring, and thanks to more modern equipment will allow to reduce the time of detection of hazards and access to the place of alarmed units, which in turn will reduce the average area of a single fire and reduce damage in the forest environment. In addition, it should be noted that the monitoring system created by PGL LP also alerts about fires occurring in areas that are not on the management board of the State Forests, but are within observation range of functioning perceptibles, including, for example, areas of National Parks and Urban Forests (municipal). Thanks to this, fire protection of areas of natural value and areas located in the immediate vicinity of urbanized areas is increased, which directly affects the safety of both residents and tourists. The project is therefore of strategic socio-economic importance and increases the country's security. The development of the fire protection system of the State Forests will reduce the risk associated with forest fires not only in the LP area, but also in private forests and built-up areas, located within or adjacent to forest complexes. The project is an element of the strategy of the State Forests of the Republic of Poland. A comprehensive program to counteract forest dying processes in Poland and mitigation activities in the perspective until 2030.
