Firefighters stand in front of the flames during a wildfire in Santa Baia De Montes, northwestern Spain, Thursday, August 14, 2025. [AP Photo\/Lalo R. Villar]<\/p>\n
On August 10, southern France\u2019s Aude prefecture announced that firefighters had brought the fire under control that had been devastating that department for almost a week. However, anger is rising across the south of France and throughout Europe, which has been hit by fires linked to global warming.<\/p>\n
While European nations boost their military budgets by hundreds of billions of euros to wage war on Russia, public authorities refuse to allocate the necessary resources to fight fires, much less address the global climate crisis.<\/p>\n
In Aude, a woman died in her home, 25 people were injured, including 20 firefighters. The material toll of the fire in Aude reports 36 homes destroyed, 20 others damaged, and 62 vehicles destroyed. This fire, by ravaging 16,000 hectares of forest, agricultural areas and homes, became the largest fire of the century in France, exceeding the level of that of 1949.<\/p>\n
Electricity access has reportedly been restored across the department, but phone networks and drinking water remain problematic. Authorities have advised residents of Durban, Coustouge, Villes\u00e8que-des-Corbi\u00e8res, Th\u00e9zan, Jonqui\u00e8res, Quintillan, Villeneuve-les-Corbi\u00e8res, and Fontjoncouse not to consume tap water.<\/p>\n
As the heatwave persists, around a thousand firefighters, reinforced by 58 soldiers, are working to prevent new fires. According to the prefecture, their mission is \u201cto tackle hot spots in support of the fire services and civil security.\u201d<\/p>\n
Driven by these extreme conditions, wildfires are raging around the entire Mediterranean rim of Europe, hitting in particular the Iberian peninsula. In Spain in just a few days a hundred thousand hectares \u2014 mainly in Castilla y Le\u00f3n and Galicia \u2014 have burned. Two firefighter volunteers have died. At least 11 major roads have been affected, and train service between Madrid and Galicia has been suspended. <\/p>\n
More than 5,000 residents were evacuated due to the fires in Zamora and C\u00e1ceres. Particular concern centres on the one in Jarilla (C\u00e1ceres), where 700 residents have been evacuated. The situation is also difficult in Galicia, especially in Ourense, with several blazes that have burned up to 20,000 hectares and forced the suspension of rail services.<\/p>\n
These disasters take place after over a decade of deep cuts to forest management budgets. Public forestry investment in Spain peaked in 2009 at \u20ac1.7 billion. By 2022, this had fallen 26 percent to \u20ac1.295 billion. Within this total, the sharpest reduction has been in fire prevention, cut by more than half. Experts have directly linked this collapse in prevention spending to the proliferation of the fires now devastating Spain.<\/p>\n
In Portugal, thousands of firefighters have been deployed to combat fires that have been ongoing for several weeks. Wildfires are particularly intense in the town of Arganil, where more than 900 firefighters face a \u201cvery unfavourable\u201d situation, authorities said Thursday. At least three other fires are burning in S\u00e1t\u00e3o, Cinf\u00e3es and Trancoso.<\/p>\n
In Greece, a large forest fire broke out in Keratea, south of Athens, and devastated the Attica region, killing at least one person. Greek authorities issued evacuation orders, while at least 260 firefighters supported by many civilian volunteers were fighting the fire.<\/p>\n
In Albania, where nearly 34,000 hectares have burned since July, the state deployed about 800 soldiers to assist firefighters against 14 active fronts. Seven helicopters and water-bombers from the UAE, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, and Greece took part, according to the Albanian Ministry of Defense.<\/p>\n
Wildfires also ignited in Turkey\u2019s \u00c7anakkale and Bayrami\u00e7 regions, where authorities had to relocate 654 residents in total.<\/p>\n
These fires sweeping southern Europe are not merely local issues that can be solved nationally; they stem from the capitalist nation-state system\u2019s failure to confront the global climate crisis. This crisis is undeniably the catalyst behind the international wave of fires and heatwaves engulfing Europe.<\/p>\n
Richard Allan, a professor at the University of Reading, told FranceInfo that the heatwave now \u201cextending to the United Kingdom is astonishingly severe by historical standards. Yet longer, more intense, and more frequent heatwaves are a predictable consequence of rising greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere, driven primarily by our use of fossil fuels.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beno\u00eet Reymond, national expert at the Forest Fire Defense Division of France\u2019s National Forestry Office, explained that these conditions created the unprecedented fire in Aude: \u201cIn the first seven or eight hours, it covered 10,000 hectares. That\u2019s almost twice the size of the 2021 Gonfaron fire, which was already extraordinary. We can\u2019t yet give an exact speed, but it likely exceeded 5 km\/h on average.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are clearly direct consequences of climate change we\u2019ve anticipated for years,\u201d he continued. The warming and resulting desiccation are fatal to vegetation, forcing trees into climatic stresses they\u2019ve never experienced in their lifetimes. Under such bone-dry conditions, fires ignite with ease.<\/p>\n