The results of the fire season and official statistics

Fire statistics, published or promulgated by officials, contradict each other. For instance in late October 1998, the Russian Federal Forest Service stated, that 28.4 thousand hectares of forest lands were burnt on Sakhalin during 1998. But not later than early October, the Forest Aeroservice said, that 35.7 thousand hectares of forest lands and 17 thousand hectars of non-forest lands had already burnt. This gap proves nothing but the lag up-dates of the Federal Forest Service.

During the summer and autumn, Sakhalin Forest Department officials presented contradicting statistics. They said the year of 1998 had outdone the fires of 1954 (the burnt-out area is supposed to be over 454,000 hectares), and they also claimed, not over 25 thousand hectares were burnt. In the long run, the number of 80.8 thousand ha was officially published by the Forestry Department of the Sakhalin Region.

The analysis of satellite imagery shows that not less than 234, 8 thousand ha of forest covered lands alone had burnt in Sakhalin during 1998, including 43.5 thousand ha damaged by crown fire. Already in early September, the burnt area was over 100 thousand ha. The total area of burnt forest is supposed to make nearly 270 thousand ha, in addition to burnt non-forest lands, it made at least 420 thousand ha. Speaking about the officials, they must have given the same "accurate" data on the amount of burnt timber.

This huge gap between official statistics and the results of satellite image analysis can not be explained by bias or a series of coincidences. Certain factors attributed to the major difference between these figures. These factors are relevant not only in Sakhalin. We have faced similar situations in many other regions, including the European Russia and the Urals.

The first factor is the system of forest management assessment and the related system of bonus/punishment. For instance, a bonus for forest protection is awarded if the area of burnt forest does not exceed the planned index, calculated as 5-year mean value. If fire destroys more than is planned, there are only two ways out: to underreport the fires or to expose all the damage and receive not a bonus, but a reprimand. It should be noted that the bonus makes up the majority of foresters' salaries.

The second factor is the way of measuring the area of burnt forest. This is done approximately, without special measurement equipment. This type of measurement may be effective when analyzing minor fire sites. But in other cases it is fraught with considerable errors. As a rule, this type of measurement results in underestimated figures. This can be accounted for by the fact, that foresters do not have any incentive to walk around and measure the whole fire site, they rather have an incentive not to do this.

Another important issue is the bonus for reforestation. You can get it, if the plantings survival rate meets the planned index and if the sufficient number of plantings survive to the time of closing of canopies. Burnt young trees may also deprive the bonus from the forest managers. This situation causes them to conceal the real number of dead trees and the real number of plantings, which have not coincided with their reports for a long period of time. As a result, there might be registered hundreds of thousands, or maybe millions of ha of non-existing forest over the expanses of Russia.

Unfortunately, this system of forest management assessment doesn't encourage actual reporting in official statistics. The managers are actually indirectly encouraged to conceal the real state of the forests.

These factors would not be so significant if it were not for one exception. During the summer and early autumn of 1998, the local media regularly referred to local and regional officials criticisms of federal authorities. They blamed the federal authorities for not extending a helping hand in this complex situation, in the form of funds or equipment. It was true, that the Sakhalin Region didn't enjoy the support of the federal authorities, but it was due to the fact, that the underreported data on fire scales did not catch anyone's attention and didn't significantly exceed the average rates. The simultaneous requests for urgent help in this situation were not adequately responded to by the federal center, for in the past, problems of this scales were resolved by local authorities with no external support. At the same time, Moscow supported other regions, that documented their requests for federal assistance.

Prompt decision making is required to fight fire with narrow means. But there were no grounds for prompt decisions, because the data on the scale of the catastrophe were underreported on purpose, or due to negligence. This is most relevant during the early and the middle stages of fire season, when there were still some opportunities to gain control over the situation with the help of local resources. How many losses and victims could have been avoided? The situation may have been averted had actual estimates been presented to the Regional Administration, Federal Forest Service and Ministry of Emergency Situations when the situation began to escalate. But the catastrophe in Sakhalin raises a wider question: When speaking about forest fires, how can we rely upon a system whose priority is producing appropriate data, but not the forest protection.