“He’s an ogre, a monster.” With these words, the firefighter Gregory Allione has expressed to the RTL station his desolation and impotence in the face of the flames that have already destroyed more than 50,000 hectares in the worst wave of fires that has devastated France. Those who fight it on the front line are overwhelmed, and there are more than 10,000, but they are not enough, nor are the material means. President Emmanuel Macron He has asked Europe for help and is going to receive it: “Solidarity is on the march,” he announced.
Men and women, vehicles and planes from Germany, Greece, Poland, Romania and Austria begin to arrive on the ground. The European Commission has also been in charge of coordinating the assistance of four planes, two from Greece and another two from Sweden, to join the extinction work. France is usually the one that lends all the resources at its disposal to lend a hand to other countries, but this time it is the country hit. The authorities attribute it to an “explosive cocktail” of climatic conditions.
The means received from the European partners will serve to reinforce the device, the largest ever deployed in France, but also so that those who have been working for long weeks without rest can take a break. Assistance that has come through the Civil Protection Mechanismas the Commissioner for Crisis Management has pointed out, Janez Lenarcic. The senior official from Brussels stressed that “the EU shows full solidarity when a country faces an emergency”.
Following a request for assistance via the ?? Civil Protection Mechanism from ??, we have dispatched 4 airplanes from our #rescEU firefighting fleet positioned in ?? and ??.
In addition, firefighting teams from ??, ??, ?? and ?? are on their way to support 1st responders. pic.twitter.com/e3MDRHSRuy
— Janez Lenarcic (@JanezLenarcic) August 11, 2022
the prime minister, Elizabeth Borne, has called for fighting “more than ever” against climate change, but also for a realism that involves adapting to it to the extent that we are already suffering the consequences. Borne has visited Hostens, in the southwest, where the fire, out of control, has forced the evacuation of more than 10,000 people. It is the place from which Gregory Allione has described the fire as an entity with a life of its own, insatiable, invincible.
“This is gigantic”
In effect, the conditions are giving the flames what they need to move forward. “The conditions are particularly difficult. The vegetation and the soil are exceptionally dry. (…) There is a very serious risk of new outbreaks,” those responsible for the extinction have warned. The temperatures will not let up until Sunday. This Thursday they reached 40 degrees in the Gironde and Landes departments, the hardest hit. “You would think it was California, this is gigantic,” firefighter Remy Lahay told Agence France-Presse.
[Europa, ante una era de ‘megaincendios’: emiten más CO2 y escapan a los esfuerzos de extinción]
Borne has traveled accompanied by the Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin, which asks to wait for the conclusion of the investigations but points to a “criminal origin” of the tragedy at that point. Darmanin has pointed out that nine out of ten starts are caused by man, such as the one that happened in Aveyron (southeast), where justice has charged a farmer.
The minister has asked companies and public administrations to release all their workers from their obligations so that they can act as volunteers. Carrefour, the company with the most employees in the country, has sent a circular to its shopping centers to give days off to those who have training to cooperate with firefighters.
Elisabeth Borne talks with firefighters during her visit to Hostens this Thursday.
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The era of megafires
Borne has spoken of adapting to climate change and in that adaptation is the necessary cooperation between countries, the solidarity to which Macron alluded, such as the one that Spain has provided and continues to provide this summer to Portugal. It is a phenomenon that concerns the continent. Europe is hopelessly in an era of megafires that emit more CO2 and escape suppression efforts. The episodes are more and more voracious and a challenge for the teams that face them.
A study published by Scientific Reports reveals a change in the fire regime of the European continent during the last decades (1980 to 2020) as a consequence of climate change. Reports from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based on the frequency and severity of fires in recent years, suggest that the Mediterranean countries are the ones that are going to suffer the most from this crisis.
[La España de la tierra quemada: el riesgo de que tu casa quede atrapada por un incendio forestal]
The Iberian Peninsula is already well aware of these fires and, in spite of itself, is already a test bed to help the countries of central and northern Europe to attack the fire. In the center and north, the thermal rise begins to warn that they need to be reinforced and formed. The FirEUrisk (Fire Risk in the European Union) project, funded by Brussels, aims to develop a scientific strategy to prevent and respond to forest fires in Europe, with the participation of 39 institutions from 19 countries, including Spain.
In our country, the area burned this summer amounts to 200,000 hectares, the worst figures in 25 years. The forest mass burned in the last 10 years amounts to almost two million hectares. 70,000 have burned in Portugal between July and so far in August.
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