European wildfires reveal hidden danger: Buried bombs, mines from world wars
ELSENBORN, Belgium — The wildfires burning across Europe this summer have exposed a potentially deadly threat lurking beneath the blackened landscape: rusty bombs and mines from World War I and II that threaten crews responding to the flames. Some of the weapons have exploded in the intense heat. Blasts have been reported in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, where a bomb-disposal team…
Elsewhere in Belgium, wildfires are exposing a hidden danger: rusty bombs and mines from World War I and II that pose a threat to crews battling the flames. Some of these weapons have detonated amid the intense heat, prompting blast reports in France, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, a bomb-disposal team was deployed to assess a forest threatened by flames near a site of intense fighting in Limburg province during the war in 1944.
Climate change is intensifying the fires and explosions, signaling the end of Europe's "climatic luck," according to Sarah Njeri, a peace and conflict scholar at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Traditionally, steady temperatures and predictable rainfall kept the buried weapons dormant. However, climate change is now unburying and reactivating these munitions that were previously stable.
The wildfires can ignite old munitions, but they can also burn away the scrub and brush that conceals them. The wildfire season was exacerbated by heavy rains in January, amplifying the threat posed by these hidden dangers.
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