Samos fire resilience and equipment program

We started SAFERS ten years ago because we kept seeing the same contradiction: perfectly functional firefighting equipment being decommissioned in wealthy countries while volunteer fire crews in fire-prone communities had almost nothing to work with. That gap costs lives and ecosystems. Closing it became our mission.

Samos is where that mission is most urgent right now. The island has burned repeatedly — in 2019, 2021, and 2022 — with fires breaking out directly around Pythagório, forcing evacuations and triggering EU emergency responses each time. The terrain is steep, the pine and scrubland is dense, and when fires start, help must arrive by air or sea. Local volunteer stations have been fighting with inadequate equipment for too long.

Over the past three years, working alongside Samos's volunteer fire crews, we have equipped stations with refurbished gear, trained volunteers in fire behaviour modelling using the ForeFire simulation tool, and supported 90 hectares of replanting and land repurposing to reduce future fire risk. Together, we have helped contain fires that modelling indicates would otherwise have spread across more than 1,000 additional hectares.

In the next twelve months, we are expanding preventive landscape management around Pythagório — strategically reshaping vegetation to slow fire spread — and deepening our first aid and community resilience training at partner stations that serve as local hubs year-round.

Samos is home to 1,500 plant species, nine of them found nowhere else on Earth. Protecting this island means protecting species that have no backup. Our 11 partner stations worldwide apply the same model. What works here travels.