Thank you. I’ve been a volunteer firefighter for a few years so discussions about wildfires always hit a nerve and I hate how many of them are used to steer public opinion towards very specific problems, while ignoring how complex the topic really is.
I live in a European country that’s practically known by its summer wildfires. We’ve had enormous fires ever since before I was born and before temperatures got this high in the summer. Our own stats show that around 70% of occurring fires happen due to human action - both negligent (people who insist on using electrical machinery in the woods in the summer) and criminal (loonies who like causing chaos and watching firefighters). The remaining percentage is mostly fires in which we can’t pinpoint the cause, and few of them actually occur “naturally”, simply because of high temperatures.
Most of our forest has been abandoned over the years, partly because the people who own it moved to more urban areas, partly because a lot of economical activities linked to the forest have become financially unfeasible for the average person. State forests get abandoned as well because state budget usually gets discussed outside of wildfire season, when everyone forgets that wildfires exist. We’ve also lost a lot of volunteer firefighters in rural areas because of a lot of immigration to other European countries for better job opportunities.
Every year, by this point of the year, the news cycle turns towards wildfires and the same old discussion about what causes them starts all over again, with most political actors - and the public themselves - attributing the causes to whatever problem they identify with the most. By october, no one in my country - or on here, most likely - will be talking about wildfires anymore.
That’s exactly the time in which we should begin clearing forests, doing maintenance work on access roads and fire stopping strips, and in general discussing what needs to be done to stop this - but by then most of the public forgets that wildfires exist and any attempt to finance those things ultimately fails as public opinion moves on and suddenly switches from “oh no, we’re all going to burn” to “we’ll deal with wildfires next year, we have plenty of time left!”. Any attempt at gaining public support to finance the necessary work to prevent wildfires is constantly shut down because, outside of summer, no one really cares about wildfires.
I’ve seen this cycle happening year after year for most of my life. We’re in the “thing I don’t like is the only cause of fires and we should stop it!” phase, and in a few months everyone will collectively stop giving a shit and move on. Fires are getting harder to fight, both because of rising temperatures and because of a collective unwillingness to act - it’s getting harder and harder to get people to volunteer at fire stations, likewise for every charity I volunteer at. Though every stat we have shows people are supposedly more politically active than ever before - or at least it appears so judging by their online activity - less and less people everyday are willing to go out and actually do something useful for their community. It’s all talk and no game. But not to worry! Only two months left till october when we’ll all pretend wild fires haven’t been destroying our landscapes for years and years.
Thank you for the insight!
But still one question: how can you pinpoint that a fire started simply because of high temperatures? How is that physically possible?
The main cause of natural fires over here are lightning strikes. There’s some phenomenon in which high temperatures can cause thunderstorms which are fairly “fast”, as in they don’t last very long, and a strike in the middle of the forest combined with hot temperatures and dry forests can cause a natural fire. But that’s actually fairly rare in my country at least.
In the past, I’ve seen studies that mixed natural causes with unknown causes, which made the number of fires happening from “natural causes” seem impossibly high - leading to the thing you pointed at in your first post, where some people actually believe that a fire could just start from nothing.
Thank you. I’ve been a volunteer firefighter for a few years so discussions about wildfires always hit a nerve and I hate how many of them are used to steer public opinion towards very specific problems, while ignoring how complex the topic really is.
I live in a European country that’s practically known by its summer wildfires. We’ve had enormous fires ever since before I was born and before temperatures got this high in the summer. Our own stats show that around 70% of occurring fires happen due to human action - both negligent (people who insist on using electrical machinery in the woods in the summer) and criminal (loonies who like causing chaos and watching firefighters). The remaining percentage is mostly fires in which we can’t pinpoint the cause, and few of them actually occur “naturally”, simply because of high temperatures.
Most of our forest has been abandoned over the years, partly because the people who own it moved to more urban areas, partly because a lot of economical activities linked to the forest have become financially unfeasible for the average person. State forests get abandoned as well because state budget usually gets discussed outside of wildfire season, when everyone forgets that wildfires exist. We’ve also lost a lot of volunteer firefighters in rural areas because of a lot of immigration to other European countries for better job opportunities.
Every year, by this point of the year, the news cycle turns towards wildfires and the same old discussion about what causes them starts all over again, with most political actors - and the public themselves - attributing the causes to whatever problem they identify with the most. By october, no one in my country - or on here, most likely - will be talking about wildfires anymore.
That’s exactly the time in which we should begin clearing forests, doing maintenance work on access roads and fire stopping strips, and in general discussing what needs to be done to stop this - but by then most of the public forgets that wildfires exist and any attempt to finance those things ultimately fails as public opinion moves on and suddenly switches from “oh no, we’re all going to burn” to “we’ll deal with wildfires next year, we have plenty of time left!”. Any attempt at gaining public support to finance the necessary work to prevent wildfires is constantly shut down because, outside of summer, no one really cares about wildfires.
I’ve seen this cycle happening year after year for most of my life. We’re in the “thing I don’t like is the only cause of fires and we should stop it!” phase, and in a few months everyone will collectively stop giving a shit and move on. Fires are getting harder to fight, both because of rising temperatures and because of a collective unwillingness to act - it’s getting harder and harder to get people to volunteer at fire stations, likewise for every charity I volunteer at. Though every stat we have shows people are supposedly more politically active than ever before - or at least it appears so judging by their online activity - less and less people everyday are willing to go out and actually do something useful for their community. It’s all talk and no game. But not to worry! Only two months left till october when we’ll all pretend wild fires haven’t been destroying our landscapes for years and years.
Thank you for the insight! But still one question: how can you pinpoint that a fire started simply because of high temperatures? How is that physically possible?
The main cause of natural fires over here are lightning strikes. There’s some phenomenon in which high temperatures can cause thunderstorms which are fairly “fast”, as in they don’t last very long, and a strike in the middle of the forest combined with hot temperatures and dry forests can cause a natural fire. But that’s actually fairly rare in my country at least.
In the past, I’ve seen studies that mixed natural causes with unknown causes, which made the number of fires happening from “natural causes” seem impossibly high - leading to the thing you pointed at in your first post, where some people actually believe that a fire could just start from nothing.