29/08/2003 (Agence Europe) - Research projects backed by the Community budget are looking for new means of preventing, detecting and fighting forest fires. The European Commission stated in a press release that since 1999, 23.5 million has been spent on these research projects into the creation of a mobile watch tower (the Spread project), fire detectors (Rapsodi), and voluntary burning of undergrowth, which can feed accidental fires (Firetorch).