INCÊNDIOS DE 1985 NAS UNIDADES DO INSTITUTO FLORESTAL DE SÃO PAULO

Abstract

This papei: presents a diagnosis about wildfire occurrences during 1985 in areas belonging or under administration of the São Paulo Forestry Institute. It was recorded 19 wildfires that bumed 589.8 hectares from July to October. This fact shows the most criticai season for forest fires occurrences in São Paulo State. However, there were no wildfires records in September. Concerning the time of the day, 63.2% of the wildfires started in the moming, 31.8% in the aftemoon and 5.0% at night. About 93.9% of the burned area were concentrated in the southwestern of the State. According to the administrative departments, the distribution of damaged area was as follow: forest fann (65.3%), ecological station (20.7%), production forest (7.3%) and experimental station (6 .. 7%). The types of vegetat1on burned were respectively: openlands (35 .0%), "cerrados" (28.2%), Eucalyptus forests (19.2%), wetlands (14.2%) and Pinus forests (3.3%). Regarding the outside cooperation for. fire fighting on São Paulo Forestry Institute stations, 68.8% were related to equipment and 45.2% to human resources. Direct attacks consisting of fuel suppression and fuel cooling were the most used fire fighting techniques to contrai the 1985's fires.