How Sweden coped with storm damage

Dr Tomas Thuresson was director of forestry with the Swedish Forest Agency (SFA) when storm Gudrun hit southern Sweden on the evening of 8 January 2005.

As the newly appointed storm coordinator, he was at the centre of Sweden’s windblow management plan to salvage 70-75 million m3 of blown and shattered trees.

He is aware of the situation in Ireland and while our estimated 11m m3 may appear modest compared to Sweden, it is worse in a number of ways. The windblow in Sweden, despite its enormity, represented one year’s harvest for the country, but in the area of the storm – Götaland – it was three years’ harvest.

Ireland’s damage varies from 18-24 months harvest for Coillte to four years’ harvest for a private forestry sector, which is fragmented and poorly organised.

Sweden adopted a strategic storm plan, which involved not only the forestry sector, but also outside agencies and government intervention (see panel). Ireland would benefit from a “central coordinator” approach, comprising a dedicated group that “would focus 100% daily on windblown issues”, advises Dr Thuresson, who now works as a management consultant specialising in economically viable and sustainable forestry.

“Without this focus group, the responsibilities will be hidden away and most people will think when problems arise that this is someone else’s responsibility,” he says.

“It is the same in all crises, and the aftermath of Éowyn is a national crisis for Ireland. Those involved in coordinating the storm plan need to have the responsibility and the power to act, and with this approach, activities and solution can be achieved.”

Action oriented

As storm coordinator, Dr Thuresson and the SFA team needed to engage not only with the forestry and forest products sector, but also government and agencies outside forestry.

“The recovery plan was very action oriented in Sweden,” he says. “All organisations got in line to do their best and to protect both the forest industries and the forest owners, as both go hand in hand.”

He says his role not just consisted of meetings with his own department personnel and the forestry sector, but he “also reported to the departments of industry and agriculture daily”.

Dr Thuresson outlines the importance of engaging with agencies responsible for log transport including rail, road and water.

“Changes in railroad law resulted in a temporary arrangement for free transportation of wood by rail especially to industries mainly in northern Sweden,” he explains.

“We also engaged with the Swedish Road Agency, which provided temporary permission to the regional agencies to increase the maximum truck loads on the public road systems. In addition the Swedish Maritime Administration (Sjöfartsverket) temporarily abolished fees for log transportation on Swedish water to make it possible to transport wood also to mainly northern Sweden.”

Sweden also relied on harvesters from abroad and created special rules for machinery outside the EU such as Norway.

Log storage

Because the volume of timber blown was large, “it was necessary to create incentives to minimise the risk of market collapse”, he says.

“We introduced incentives for storing wood, including storage of logs at roadside, centralised, medium-size storage and large storage depots, which required sprinkling systems to avoid timber degrade.

“Many lessons were learned about how, when and in what order to harvest the blown timber. National coordination between organisations and regions, including the creation of relevant information material will be important for Ireland. In northern Sweden, harvesting was minimised to make it easier for the southern storm injured areas to harvest, which allowed machine harvesting groups go south to harvest the windblown forests.”

By 2007, when all the windblow had been harvested, Dr Thuresson had taken up a new role as CEO of HäradSkog AB, which managed over 50,000ha of forests in the northern part of the storm damaged area mainly in Svealand. Here, his company was heavily involved in replanting cleared forests, so he has experience both in clearing windblow and its aftermath.

He advises Ireland not to lose sight of the replanting operation: “We had to plan to avoid reforestation chaos in order to ensure that sufficient nursery seedlings were available to replant the damaged forests.

“While 270,000ha of Sweden’s forests were damaged, 170,000ha actually needed replanting as some trees were still standing within the blown areas where reforestation was not necessary in accordance with the Swedish Forest Act.”

The revised windblown area in Ireland is now estimated at 26,000ha, which will require 65m plants in addition to normal afforestation and reforestation programmes.

Sweden’s government was directly involved in supporting the forestry sector after storm Gudrun in 2005.

Apart from enabling temporary legislation to incentivise rail, water and road transport, Dr Tomas Thuresson outlines the following government initiatives, which were agreed with the SFA in confronting the crisis.

“It is really amazing that Ireland’s felling licence issue is not solved yet,” said Dr Tomas Thuresson when he was informed that windblown forests without a licence need to apply for one, which could take months before approval is granted.

“Just fix it,” he says. “It can’t be that complicated.”

Compared with Sweden’s simple but efficient licensing or felling notice procedure, the Irish system is complicated, costly and onerous.

“In Sweden we did not have, and still do not have, the concept of felling licenses, except in very special areas in the north,” he says. “What we do have is a system of felling notices sent to the SFA and if the agency has no complaint on the felling notice, the forest owner is free to harvest. During my time with the agency, we still needed felling notices from forest owners or their representatives, but we gave very quick response, which was normally a week maximum.”