Features and Performance of Forest Fire Access Roads and Fire Department Connections as Assessed by Employees of the Polish State Fire Service

Goal: The main goal of this article was the evaluation of the applicable legal regulations in the field of fire access roads and fire department connections in forests. It was carried out by employees of municipal and district State Fire Service (PSP) departments. An additional goal was to explore the relationship between the characteristics of forest areas and the responses given by respondents to the questions in the questionnaire. Introduction: It has been 20 years since the introduction of the obligation to establish fire access roads in forest areas. Fire access roads are an extremely important element of the fire protection infrastructure in forest complexes, providing the basis for planning and organising rescue and firefighting operations. Fire access roads also function as the backbone of the transport network necessary to carry out all management tasks in any forest complex. Requirements for the specifications of fire access roads are provided in general laws and, in the case of State Forests, in industry regulations. Now that twenty years that have passed since the first set of requirements for forest fire protection systems was formulated for all forests regardless of their ownership form, it seems reasonable to try to reassess their relevance. Methods: The authors analysed the data collected during a survey of employees of municipal and district State Fire Service departments from all across Poland. The survey questionnaire consisted of 10 main questions – mostly multiple-choice, with the option of adding comments. The information obtained from the surveys served as the basis for creating a database in which the responses from individual departments were grouped by province on the basis of five criteria: terrain, location on the east-west axis, forest cover, average number of fires between 2013 and 2017, and the share of private forests. The significance of the correlation between these variables was tested using the chi-square test of independence, and the correlations were checked using the Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. Results: In the opinion of the respondents, the applicable laws in the area of forest fire protection were in most cases sufficient for the purposes of preventive operations, active protection, and rescue operations. Survey results indicate that the expected changes in regulations are related primarily to the bearing capacity of fire access road surfaces and methods of arranging fire department connections. In addition, respondents emphasised the problem of the distance between fire access roads. Respondents did not show so much agreement on the other investigated issues. But the majority of them confirmed that the applicable regulations were reasonable and needed to be strictly enforced. Conclusions: The applicable requirements contained in the provisions of commonly applicable law and industry guidelines regarding fire access roads and fire department connections in forest areas, in the opinion of employees of municipal and district State Fire Service departments, were generally appropriate to support fast, efficient and safe firefighting operations in forest areas. The most serious doubts among respondents as to the relevance of the existing solutions pertained to the bearing capacity of fire access road surfaces and the arrangement of fire department connections. Opinions about forest fire protection elements in Poland, as formed by PSP employees, are, to a limited extent, affected by such features of their work environment as geographical location, terrain, forest cover, and ownership structure of forests.