800 hectares burned down, a perimeter of 17km, 3500 people evacuated in the middle of the night from Asciano, a hamlet of San Giuliano Terme (PI): these are the numbers provided by the Civil Protection of the Tuscany Region on the forest fire that developed starting from the last hours of April 28 on the Mount Faetabetween the provinces of Lucca and Pisa, which fortunately is now underway shutdown and reclamation. The perimeter of the fires is largely under control and the evacuees were able to return to their homes on the evening of May 1st, thanks to a reduction in the wind and the intervention of the Fire Brigade and the army.
According to the first information gathered by the mayor of San Giuliano Terme, it would appear that the fire started from San Pantaleone valleyin the province of Lucca, due to a burning of olive tree prunings – practice prohibited during windy days, as declared by the President of the Tuscany Region Eugenio Giani – got out of control. However, the investigations are ongoing and the response from the Judiciary is awaited to confirm this hypothesis.
That of Monte Faeta is one of the most serious fires in recent years in Tuscanysecond only to the fire of Mount Serra of 2018, where they went up in smoke 1200 hectares of forest.
The dynamics of the fire on Monte Faeta: the role of wind and air spotting
The first fire outbreak probably started at the end of April 28, but the situation worsened the following day. As anticipated, the hypothesis – to be confirmed – on which the first reconstructions are based is that a private farmer in Lucca was burning olive prunings when the flames got out of hand due to the north wind that was blowing in the area.
The wind would then have fueled the extension of the fire front, which already in an initial phase could have reached the Pisan side of Monte Faeta, threatening on the day of April 30th some houses in the Asciano valley in San Giuliano Terme. At that point the area covered by the fires already extended to 250 hectares.
The situation worsened throughout the day due to a mechanism called spotting. This happens when the wind carries burning embers beyond the containment lines, where they fall, igniting new outbreaks at a distance from the main front. In the case of Monte Faeta, numerous outbreaks generated by close spotting phenomena have been reported, making it effectively impossible to intervene on a single front. This makes extinguishing operations much more complicated and causes an uncontrolled extension of the fire front.
This led to the situation worsening during the night between 30 April and 1 May, so much so that the evacuation of approximately 3000 people between Asciano and San Giuliano Terme. A new evacuation order then extended the measure to other residents in the area, for a total of 3500 people who had to leave their homes with the help of the Army and the Carabinieri.
The interventions saw an impressive deployment of means: 4 were used on the air front Canadair and a helicopter Erickson S-64while on the ground 104 Fire Brigades carried out a total of 85 interventions on the Pisan side, while on the Lucca side another 57 Fire Brigades were employed. The teams also intervened forest fire prevention system (AIB) of the Tuscany Region.
The May 1st the emergency began to ease thanks to a wind drop: the cessation of the gusts stopped the spotting phenomenon and allowed the intervention teams to consolidate the perimeter of the fires and contain the flames. As Giani stated, a artificial lake carried out a few months ago, which allowed helicopters to intervene quickly. At the moment, the fires on the Lucca front have been extinguished while on the Pisan front the perimeter is contained for the 70%. This led to the revocation of the evacuation order on the night of May 1st, restoring relative tranquility in the area most affected by the fire (of the 800 hectares burned by the flames, approximately 600 belong to the Pisan municipality side).
The fire season in Italy starts early again this year: EFFIS data
Although the situation is now fortunately receding without causing any casualties, there remains a certain concern about the fact that such a serious fire broke out at the end of Aprilahead of the summer fire season. An increasingly frequent problem due to climate change: last year, for example, the fire season started early in Italy.
In the image below we can see the data provided byEuropean Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) on the trend in the number of forest fires in Italy since 2006, which shows a significant increase in the average over the last decade.
To date, the hectares burned in Italy in 2026 are already 2045 in the course of 20 fires. This is a value that, compared to the average of the last 20 years, we could expect to be mid-June (as shown in the graph below, created starting from EFFIS data), and that instead we find ourselves at the beginning of May precisely because of the fire on Monte Faeta.
