Category Archives: Forest Fires

ALGIERS, Algeria — At least 25 soldiers died saving residents from wildfires ravaging mountain forests and villages east of Algeria’s capital, the president announced as the civilian toll rose to at least 17. President Abdelmadjid Tebboune tweeted that the soldiers were “martyrs” who saved 100 people from the fires in two areas of Kabyle, the region that is home to the North African nation’s Berber population. Eleven other soldiers were burned fighting the fires, four of them seriously, the Defense Ministry said. Prime Minister Aïmene Benabderrahmane later said that 17 civilians had lost their lives, raising the count of citizens from seven previously and bringing the total death toll to 42. The mountainous Kabyle region, 100 kilometers east of Algeria’s capital of Algiers, is dotted with difficult-to-access villages and with temperatures rising has had limited water. Some villagers were fleeing, while others tried to hold back the flames themselves, using buckets, branches and rudimentary tools. 

RUSSIA — Smoke from raging forest fires in Siberia has reached the north pole for the first time in recorded history, as a Russian monitoring institute warned the blazes were worsening. Devastating wildfires have ripped across Siberia with increasing regularity over the past few years, which Russia’s weather officials and environmentalists have linked to climate change and an underfunded forest service. …One of Siberia’s hardest-hit regions this year has been Yakutia – Russia’s largest and coldest region that sits atop permafrost – which has had record high temperatures and drought. …On Saturday, the US space agency Nasa said its satellite images showed wildfire smoke travelling “more than 3,000km (1,800 miles) from Yakutia to reach the north pole”, calling it “a first in recorded history”. It added that on 6 August most of Russia was covered in smoke.

ARKITSA Greece — Firefighters and residents battled into the night Monday for a seventh day against a massive fire on Greece’s second-largest island as the nation endured what the prime minister described as “a natural disaster of unprecedented proportions.” Smoke and ash from Evia, a rugged island of forests and coves close to the Greek mainland, blocked out the sun and turned the sky orange. The fire, which began Aug. 3, is the most severe of hundreds in the past week across Greece, gobbling up pristine pine forests as well as homes and businesses and forcing hundreds to quickly evacuate by sea to save their lives. Greece has been baked by its worst heat wave in three decades, which sent temperatures up to 45 degrees Celsius and turned its prized pine forests into bone-dry tinderboxes.

MOSCOW — Russian authorities started to evacuate two villages in a vast region of Siberia where 155 active forest fires burned Sunday.  A dozen villages in northeastern Siberia’s Sakha-Yakutia republic were threatened by the fires, according to the regional task force dealing with the emergency. Local authorities were moving the residents of two villages, Kalvitsa and Kharyyalakh, to other inhabited areas as crews totaling 3,600 people worked to contain about half of the blazes.  On Saturday, flames destroyed 31 houses and eight maintenance buildings in another village, Byas-Kuel, and about 400 residents were evacuated, local officials said.  Yakutia governor Aysen Nikolayev ordered officials to have areas around the endangered villages deforested. In recent years, Russia has recorded high temperatures that many scientists regard as a result of climate change. The hot weather coupled with the neglect of fire safety rules has caused a growing number of fires.

ATHENS, Greece — Three large wildfires churned across Greece on Saturday, with one threatening whole towns and cutting a line across Evia, the country’s second-largest island, isolating its northern part. Others engulfed forested mountainsides and skirted ancient sites, leaving behind a trail of destruction that one official described as “a biblical catastrophe.” A flotilla of 10 ships — two Coast Guard patrols, two ferries, two passenger ships and four fishing boats — waited at the seaside resort of Pefki, near the northern tip of Evia, ready to evacuate more residents and tourists if needed… Firefighters were fighting through the night to save Istiaia, a town of 7,000 in northern Evia, as well as several villages, using bulldozers to open up clear paths in the thick forest. The fire on Evia forced the hasty Friday night evacuation of about 1,400 people from a seaside village and island beaches by a motley assortment of boats…

At least 150 houses have been destroyed by a raging fire that surrounded a monastery and a dozen villages on the Greek island of Evia, one of over 100 blazes burning in the country. Firefighters were also continuing to battle a blaze near Athens on Thursday morning, while the mayor of Olympia, pleaded for help as flames threatened the site. The blazes erupted as Greece is in the grip of a heatwave. …Experts have warned that global heating is increasing both the frequency and intensity of such fires. On Evia, the huge flames leaping up from the forest could be seen from the sea. …In outskirts of Athens more than 500 firefighters, a dozen water-bombing planes and five helicopters battled another wildfire. The blaze started on Tuesday in a pine forest at the foot of Mount Parnitha, sending plumes of dark, acrid smoke over Athens and leaving carcasses of burnt-out houses in its wake.

The season of Brazilian forest fires has begun, and early data plus severe drought is sparking concern that nationwide destruction in 2021 will stay at the high levels recorded in the past two years, despite efforts to tamp down the blazes. The government space agency …reported more area burned in the month of July than in any July since 2016. The same was true for June. Most Brazilian blazes are manmade, often started illegally by land-grabbers clearing forest for cattle or crops. Fires tend to begin increasing in June and peak in September, according to historical data. They can easily get out of control during the dry season, burning large swaths of forest to the ground. …Carlos Nobre, a prominent climatologist, says Brazil’s Amazon is nearing a “tipping point,” after which the thick jungle will cease to generate enough moisture to sustain its current form and will begin transforming into tropical savanna.

This summer has been scarred by heat. Extreme weather events have plagued countries around the world in recent months — heat waves in the United States, drought in Iran and so many floods. But the unforgiving wildfires just don’t seem to stop. At the end of June, there were fires in Canada, where an unprecedented heat dome proved catastrophic, destroying an entire village. Other fires torched homes and raged through brush across 10 western US state, the largest of those fires raging in Oregon. The smoke even made its way across the country. Ancient forests have burned down. Towns have been evacuated. People are threatened by burns, smoke inhalation or death in the ravages of the flames. Firefighters are sent to the scene to battle in the heat — and they’re exhausted. Now, wildfires are taking over forests on the Italian island of Sardinia and in northeast Spain.

MUGLA, Turkey — A coal-fueled power plant in southwest Turkey and nearby residential areas were being evacuated Wednesday evening as flames from a wildfire reached the plant, a mayor and local reporters said as sirens from the plant could be heard blaring. Milas Mayor Muhammet Tokat, from Turkey’s main opposition party, has been warning of the fire risks for the past two days for the Kemerkoy power plant in Mugla province. He said late Wednesday that the plant was being evacuated. Local reporters said the wildfires had also prompted the evacuation of the nearby seaside area of Oren. Turkey’s defense ministry said it was evacuating people by sea as the fires neared the plant. The state broadcaster TRT said the flames had “jumped” to the plant. Strong winds were making the fires unpredictable. … TRT said flammable and explosive substances had been removed. 

MOSCOW – Summer wildfires have already produced a record amount of carbon emissions in Russia’s Siberian region of Yakutia, with still more weeks of the fire season to come, according to the European Union’s Copernicus satellite monitoring unit. Environmentalists fear the fires, fuelled by hot weather, may thaw Siberian permafrost and peatlands, releasing even more carbon that was long stored in the frozen tundra. So far, this year’s fires have torn through more than 4.2 million hectares in Yakutia, sending enormous plumes of smoke as far as the North Pole this week thousands of kilometers away. …While wildfire is part of the natural forest cycle for Russia’s northern boreal forests, scientists have been stunned by the scale and intensity of blazes in recent years.

VARIBOBI, Greece — Firefighters in Greece raced Wednesday to fully contain a wildfire on the outskirts of Athens that destroyed or seriously damaged dozens of homes overnight, forced thousands to flee, and threatened a former royal palace, as high temperatures fueled wildfires across the country. Greece is enduring its worst heat wave in decades, with temperatures in parts of the country expected to reach 113 Fahrenheit. The Fire Service took advantage of cooler morning hours to send low-flying helicopters and planes to dump water on charred forest land around Tatoi, 12 1/2 miles north of the capital, where more than 500 firefighters had battled through the night to contain the blaze… The fire outside Athens sent clouds of smoke over the Greek capital, obscuring visibility and prompting health authorities to issue warnings to people with breathing difficulties to remain indoors.

Turkey has mobilized and united in efforts to fight against wildfires that have wreaked havoc on swathes of the country’s south and Aegean region. People across the country are sending food aid to the disaster zones, while inhabitants at the scene of fires are carrying water to firefighters and aid to the victims. The blazes began in early July 28 in four separate locations, including the most destructive in the Manavgat district of the southern province of Antalya. The fires broke out almost in tandem across other Mediterranean provinces, then across some 40 provinces and districts in 50 hours. …among the helpers are people who have been evacuated from their houses due to fires. Firefighters are recommended to drink ayran, a cold savory yogurt-based beverage thought to be preventative against smoke poisoning.

A heat wave across southern Europe, fed by hot air from North Africa, has triggered deadly blazes across the Mediterranean with the death toll rising to eight on Sunday. Wildfires are raging near Turkey’s holiday beach destinations of Antalya and Mugla and in the surrounding countryside, with villages destroyed, animals on fire and people being forced to evacuate. Blazes have also affected the Italian island of Sicily, Croatia and western Greece, where some residents had to be evacuated by boat to escape the flames. On Sunday, bathers on an Italian beach south of the Adriatic city of Pescara fled when they spotted towering clouds of smoke and flames from a fire in a nearby pine forest. Meanwhile, in Turkey’s eastern Van province, floods over the weekend destroyed at least six houses after a small river overflowed amid heavy rains. [This article contains a stack of mini stories, scroll down in main article for various countries].