More than a thousand firefighters are battling two wildfires in Ōtsuchi, Iwate, as three thousand people flee their homes. We dig into the science of fire in Japan, the country's forestry history, and what these blazes tell us about the climate ahead.
Más de mil bomberos luchan contra dos incendios forestales en Ōtsuchi, Iwate, mientras tres mil personas abandonan sus hogares. Hablamos sobre la ciencia del fuego en Japón, la historia forestal del país y lo que estos incendios nos dicen sobre el futuro del clima.
8 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| incendio forestal | wildfire / forest fire | Los bomberos lucharon durante días contra el incendio forestal en las montañas. |
| evacuado | evacuee / evacuated | Tres mil personas evacuadas tuvieron que dejar sus casas por el incendio. |
| ladera | hillside / slope | El fuego subió rápidamente por la ladera de la montaña. |
| cortafuegos | firebreak | Los bomberos cortaron los árboles para crear un cortafuegos. |
| combustible | fuel / combustible material | Las hojas secas en el suelo son el combustible principal del incendio. |
| hoja | leaf / page / blade (context-dependent) | Las hojas secas del cedro se acumulan en el suelo y pueden arder fácilmente. |
| manto de nieve | snowpack | Sin el manto de nieve en invierno, el suelo está muy seco en primavera. |
| vulnerables | vulnerable | Las personas mayores son las más vulnerables cuando hay una evacuación de emergencia. |
A thousand firefighters.
Three thousand people evacuated.
Two fires burning at the same time in a mountainous coastal region of Japan that most people outside the country couldn't find on a map.
That combination stopped me.
Sí, Ōtsuchi.
Yes, Ōtsuchi.
Es una ciudad pequeña en la prefectura de Iwate, en el norte de Japón.
It's a small city in Iwate Prefecture, in northern Japan.
La mayoría de la gente no la conoce, pero tiene una historia muy triste.
Most people don't know it, but it has a very sad history.
En 2011, el tsunami destruyó gran parte de la ciudad.
In 2011, the tsunami destroyed much of the city.
Right, so this is a place that was essentially rebuilt from scratch after the Tōhoku disaster, and now it's dealing with fire on top of everything else.
That context matters.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y lo que me parece importante es que Japón no piensa en los incendios forestales como un país de riesgo alto.
And what I find important is that Japan doesn't think of itself as a high-risk country for wildfires.
Cuando la gente habla de incendios grandes, piensa en California, en Australia, en España.
When people talk about big fires, they think of California, Australia, Spain.
Japón no está en esa lista normalmente.
Japan isn't normally on that list.
And that's actually the science question I want to dig into, because Japan is a heavily forested country.
Something like 68 percent of the land is forest.
So why haven't we been talking about Japanese wildfires the way we talk about California?
Bueno, la respuesta tiene dos partes.
Well, the answer has two parts.
La primera es el clima.
The first is climate.
Japón tiene inviernos húmedos y veranos muy lluviosos, con el monzón.
Japan has wet winters and very rainy summers, with the monsoon.
No es un país seco en general.
It's not a dry country in general.
La segunda parte es más complicada.
The second part is more complicated.
Tell me the complicated part.
Después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, Japón plantó millones de árboles para reconstruir los bosques destruidos por la guerra y por la industria.
After World War II, Japan planted millions of trees to rebuild the forests destroyed by war and industry.
Pero plantaron sobre todo cedros japoneses, los sugi.
But they planted mainly Japanese cedars, sugi.
Son árboles que crecen rápido, pero producen mucho material seco que puede arder fácilmente.
They're trees that grow fast, but they produce a lot of dry material that can burn easily.
So they essentially engineered a fire risk into the landscape without knowing it.
That's a story I've seen play out in a lot of places.
The American West did something similar with fire suppression, letting fuel accumulate for decades.
Es el mismo problema.
It's the same problem.
Los sugi tienen mucha resina y sus hojas secas, las que caen al suelo, se acumulan en grandes cantidades.
Sugi trees have a lot of resin and their dry leaves, the ones that fall to the ground, accumulate in large quantities.
Y cuando no llueve durante semanas, ese material es como gasolina.
And when it doesn't rain for weeks, that material is like gasoline.
Now, Iwate is in the Sanriku coast region, which is mountainous.
And that matters enormously for how a fire behaves, right?
I spent some time in the hills above Beirut once and watched a fire move uphill with a speed that genuinely scared me.
Claro.
Of course.
El fuego en las montañas es mucho más peligroso que en terreno plano.
Fire in the mountains is much more dangerous than on flat terrain.
Cuando el fuego sube por una ladera, el calor calienta el material que está arriba antes de que lleguen las llamas.
When fire climbs a slope, the heat warms the material above it before the flames arrive.
Es como precalentar el combustible.
It's like preheating the fuel.
El fuego puede moverse diez veces más rápido cuesta arriba.
Fire can move ten times faster uphill.
Ten times.
That's not a small difference.
And you add wind coming off the Pacific into those valleys and you have something genuinely hard to control.
En primavera, en el norte de Japón, hay un viento especial que baja de las montañas.
In spring, in northern Japan, there's a special wind that descends from the mountains.
Se llama el yamase cuando viene del este, pero hay vientos locales que bajan secos desde las montañas interiores.
The one from the east is called yamase, but there are local winds that come down dry from the interior mountains.
Este tipo de viento seca la vegetación muy rápido.
This type of wind dries out vegetation very quickly.
It's analogous to the Santa Ana winds in Southern California.
Same physics, different geography.
A dry wind accelerating downslope, stripping moisture out of everything in its path.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y ahora añade el cambio climático.
And now add climate change.
Los inviernos en Japón son cada vez más secos en algunas regiones.
Winters in Japan are increasingly dry in some regions.
La nieve en las montañas de Iwate llegó tarde este año.
The snow in Iwate's mountains arrived late this year.
Sin nieve, el suelo está más seco en primavera.
Without snow, the soil is drier in spring.
The snowpack question is huge.
I reported on water rights in the American West years back, and the whole conversation was about snowpack.
Snow isn't just precipitation, it's a slow-release reservoir.
When it's gone earlier or doesn't arrive, that deficit shows up in ways people don't expect, including fire.
Y en Iwate, la situación es más difícil porque es una región con muchos árboles, mucha montaña y pocos recursos.
And in Iwate, the situation is harder because it's a region with many trees, many mountains, and few resources.
La población es mayor, hay menos gente joven para trabajar en el campo o en los bosques.
The population is older, there are fewer young people to work in the fields or forests.
Los bosques no están bien mantenidos.
The forests aren't well maintained.
Forest management.
That's the piece that doesn't make it into the headlines but matters enormously.
Thinning trees, clearing dead wood, creating firebreaks.
It's labor-intensive work, and in a country with Japan's demographic curve, rural labor shortages are severe.
Japón tiene un problema demográfico muy serio.
Japan has a very serious demographic problem.
En las zonas rurales como Iwate, muchos pueblos pequeños tienen una media de edad de más de sesenta años.
In rural areas like Iwate, many small towns have an average age of over sixty.
Los jóvenes van a Tokio.
Young people go to Tokyo.
Nadie queda para cuidar el bosque.
Nobody is left to look after the forest.
And Ōtsuchi itself was already depleted after 2011.
The tsunami killed roughly ten percent of the population.
A town that loses that many people in a single morning doesn't fully recover in fifteen years.
Es verdad.
That's true.
Y por eso los evacuados, las tres mil personas, son en gran parte personas mayores.
And that's why the evacuees, the three thousand people, are largely older people.
Cuando hay una emergencia, los más vulnerables son los que más necesitan ayuda.
When there's an emergency, the most vulnerable are the ones who need the most help.
Y son también los que más difícil lo tienen para salir solos.
And they're also the ones who find it hardest to leave on their own.
Let me come back to the science of the firefighting itself for a second, because a thousand firefighters in mountainous terrain is a serious mobilization.
What are they actually doing up there?
You can't run a hose up a mountain the same way you'd work a fire in a flat field.
En Japón, los bomberos en los incendios forestales usan mucho los helicópteros para tirar agua desde el aire.
In Japan, firefighters dealing with forest fires use helicopters a lot to drop water from the air.
También hacen cortafuegos, que son líneas donde cortan todos los árboles y la vegetación para que el fuego no pueda continuar.
They also build firebreaks, which are lines where they cut all the trees and vegetation so the fire can't continue.
Es como construir un muro invisible.
It's like building an invisible wall.
The firebreak idea is counterintuitive until you understand combustion.
You're not fighting the fire directly;
you're starving it.
Fire is a chemical reaction that needs three things: fuel, heat, and oxygen.
Remove the fuel ahead of it and the reaction simply stops.
Pero en las montañas hay otro problema.
But in the mountains there's another problem.
El viento cambia de dirección muy rápido.
The wind changes direction very quickly.
Un cortafuegos que funciona con viento del norte puede no funcionar si el viento cambia al este.
A firebreak that works with a north wind may not work if the wind shifts to the east.
Los bomberos tienen que predecir el movimiento del fuego, y eso es muy difícil.
Firefighters have to predict the fire's movement, and that's very difficult.
Which is where modern fire science comes in.
There are computational models now, similar to weather prediction, that simulate how a fire will spread given the terrain, the vegetation type, the wind forecast.
The US Forest Service uses them.
Australia has its own versions.
Japan has been developing theirs.
Sí, y también usan drones para ver el fuego desde arriba en tiempo real.
Yes, and they also use drones to see the fire from above in real time.
Antes, los bomberos no sabían exactamente dónde estaban las llamas en las partes más altas de la montaña.
Before, firefighters didn't know exactly where the flames were on the higher parts of the mountain.
Ahora pueden ver el incendio completo con una cámara en el dron.
Now they can see the entire fire with a camera on the drone.
The situational awareness question.
In conflict zones, we used to say the most dangerous moment is when you don't know where the threat is.
Fire is the same, I imagine.
The drone changes that completely.
Completamente.
Completely.
Y ahora hay satélites también.
And now there are satellites too.
Japón tiene satélites propios que pueden detectar el calor de un incendio forestal muy pronto, a veces antes de que la gente en el suelo lo vea.
Japan has its own satellites that can detect the heat from a forest fire very early, sometimes before the people on the ground see it.
La temperatura del suelo sube antes de que aparezcan las llamas grandes.
The ground temperature rises before the big flames appear.
Infrared detection.
That technology was military in origin, as most of these things are.
And now it's watching for wildfires from orbit.
There's something both impressive and slightly grim about that trajectory.
La ciencia siempre tiene esa historia, ¿no?
Science always has that story, doesn't it?
Muchas herramientas que usamos en la vida normal empezaron como tecnología militar.
Many tools we use in normal life started as military technology.
El internet, el GPS, ahora los satélites de detección de incendios.
The internet, GPS, now fire detection satellites.
The bigger picture, though, is this: Japan is a preview.
A country that wasn't considered fire-prone, that has good infrastructure and strong institutions, is now deploying a thousand firefighters to a mountainous coastal region in April.
April.
That's a shoulder season.
That used to be before fire season, not during it.
Es un punto muy importante.
That's a very important point.
En Japón, la temporada de incendios tradicional era en otoño, cuando las hojas caen y el aire es seco.
In Japan, the traditional fire season was in autumn, when the leaves fall and the air is dry.
Pero ahora los incendios grandes ocurren en invierno y en primavera también.
But now large fires occur in winter and spring too.
Las estaciones están cambiando.
The seasons are changing.
And that's the climate signal embedded in this story.
It's not that fire is new.
It's that the calendar of fire is expanding.
Longer fire windows mean more chances for ignition, more stress on firefighting resources, more communities in the path.
Y los científicos japoneses lo confirman.
And Japanese scientists confirm it.
Hay estudios que muestran que el número de días con condiciones de alto riesgo de incendio aumentó casi un treinta por ciento en los últimos cuarenta años en algunas regiones de Japón.
There are studies that show the number of days with high fire risk conditions increased by almost thirty percent in the last forty years in some regions of Japan.
Es un cambio muy claro.
It's a very clear change.
Thirty percent over forty years.
That's not noise in the data.
That's a trend with a direction.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y la solución no es solo más bomberos.
And the solution isn't just more firefighters.
Los científicos dicen que hay que cambiar los bosques, plantar más variedad de árboles, no solo sugi.
Scientists say the forests need to change, plant more variety of trees, not just sugi.
Y hay que cuidar mejor el bosque, limpiar el material seco.
And the forest needs better management, clearing the dry material.
Pero eso necesita dinero y personas jóvenes, y las dos cosas faltan en el campo japonés.
But that needs money and young people, and both are lacking in the Japanese countryside.
So it's a science problem tangled up in a demographics problem tangled up in a climate problem.
And sitting underneath all of it, for Ōtsuchi specifically, is the unfinished story of 2011.
That community has been absorbing catastrophe for fifteen years.
Sí, y eso es lo que me parece más triste.
Yes, and that's what I find saddest.
No es solo el fuego.
It's not just the fire.
Es que estas comunidades pequeñas, ya debilitadas, tienen que enfrentar un desastre más.
It's that these small communities, already weakened, have to face one more disaster.
Y cada vez tienen menos recursos para hacerlo.
And each time they have fewer resources to deal with it.
You used a word a bit ago that I want to come back to, actually.
You said the cedars produce material that can burn "fácilmente." But earlier you described what's on the forest floor as "hojas secas" from the sugi.
Are they actually leaves?
I thought conifers had needles.
Buena pregunta.
Good question.
En español, a veces decimos "hojas" para hablar de la parte verde de cualquier planta, aunque sea una aguja de pino o de cedro.
In Spanish, we sometimes say 'hojas' to refer to the green part of any plant, even if it's a pine needle or cedar needle.
Pero la palabra más precisa para las coníferas es "acículas".
But the more precise word for conifers is 'acículas.' Those are the needles.
Son las agujas.
Although in normal conversation, people say 'hojas' and everyone understands.
Aunque en la conversación normal, la gente dice "hojas" y todo el mundo entiende.
So "hoja" is doing a lot of work in Spanish.
It covers leaves, pages of a book, blades of a knife, and apparently conifer needles in casual speech.
English has that too, I suppose.
We just say "leaf" and trust the context to sort it out.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y "acícula" existe para cuando necesitas ser preciso, como en un texto científico.
And 'acícula' exists for when you need to be precise, like in a scientific text.
Pero si dices "acícula" en una conversación normal, la gente te mira un poco raro.
But if you say 'acícula' in a normal conversation, people look at you a bit oddly.
[chuckle] Es una de esas palabras que viven en los libros.
It's one of those words that lives in books.
A word that lives in books.
I like that.
English is full of those too.
"Frond" for fern leaves.
Nobody says frond.
You say it and people wonder if you're showing off.
En español tenemos muchas palabras así, sobre todo en ciencias.
In Spanish we have many words like that, especially in science.
Pero lo interesante de "hoja" es que tiene muchos significados y los hablantes nunca se confunden.
But what's interesting about 'hoja' is that it has many meanings and speakers are never confused.
El contexto lo hace todo.
Context does everything.
Un estudiante de B1 puede usar "hoja" en casi cualquier situación y será correcto.
A B1 student can use 'hoja' in almost any situation and it will be correct.
Good advice.
Lean on the common word and let the situation do the work.
That's probably more useful than memorizing "acícula" and waiting for the one conversation where it comes up.
Aunque si algún día hablas con un botánico japonés sobre los sugi...
Although if you ever talk to a Japanese botanist about sugi...
ya sabes la palabra.
now you know the word.
I'll file it next to "embarazado" in the archive of words I know but shouldn't attempt in public.
Thanks, Octavio.
This one genuinely changed how I think about fire risk, and about what's at stake for places like Ōtsuchi.