As wildfires rage, Europe must fix how it fights them

What happened: More than 330,000 people have been forced to evacuate from the paths of wildfires in France and Spain. And with another heat wave set to start this week, officials in both countries seem largely resigned to containment rather than extinguishing the flames.

Why it matters: While much of the conversation around preventing future fires has centered on climate change, many experts warn that time and resources would be better spent on other approaches. Understanding the nature of these storms and what has caused them to grow out of control so quickly (including the onset of what NASA calls “fire-breathing dragon clouds”) are key elements of that conversation.

The backstory: The largest evacuations since World War II

More than 330,000 people have been evacuated from southwestern France and central Spain as a series of wildfires continues to destroy much of the region. It’s one of the largest evacuations in Europe since World War II, and it’s “far from over.”

In Spain, firefighters have kept the flames roughly 25 miles from Madrid, but more than 190,000 acres have already burned. Their government recently declared Spain’s first-ever national wildfire emergency. While Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez described recent efforts as “very positive in terms of bringing the flames under control,” Valencia’s regional president—Juanfran Perez Llorca—declared that “The fire is beyond our capacity to extinguish.”

Rocío Domínguez, who was forced to evacuate from a town west of Madrid, said, “It looked like the apocalypse. You couldn’t see anything. Everything was covered in ash.”

Things in France appear to be just as bad. An estimated 13,566 fires have broken out in recent weeks as Europe’s hottest summer on record has led to a massive conflagration, leaving roughly 104,000 acres burned and 240 homes destroyed. 

Now the flames are less than 10 miles from Bordeaux, where the caretakers of its historic wineries and vineyards are left to wonder what will be left when the fires finally cease. And Bordeaux’s mayor warns that for the city itself, home to roughly 268,000 people, a complete evacuation would be all but impossible.  

And, if forecasts are to be believed, there’s little help on the horizon. 

The Bordeaux region in France has only had three days of rain since the start of June. Moreover, a new heat wave is set to hit France and Spain in the coming days, with highs of 104 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. It will be the fourth such heat wave to hit Europe since May and could place other parts of the country at risk for new fires in addition to worsening those that are still burning. In response, Portugal has recently issued wildfire warnings of their own. 

However, the heat and the lack of rain are not the only factors driving the storms. France recently encountered pyrocumulonimbus clouds—or “fire-breathing dragon clouds” as NASA calls them—and they’ve done much to live up to that moniker.  

Thunderstorms with no rain

Pyrocumulonimbus clouds (or pyroCb for short) are essentially fire-generated thunderstorms caused when the energy and heat from a wildfire rise high enough for low atmospheric pressure to cool them. The moisture then condenses into an anvil-shaped cloud that can generate lightning and winds of up to 90 miles per hour.

Under normal conditions, a thunderstorm—or at least the accompanying rain—could be a blessing when it comes to fighting fires. However, with wildfires of this size, so much heat rises that the rain evaporates before it ever reaches the flames. As a result, the strong downdrafts and high winds are the only things that actually make it to the ground. 

These storms have become fairly common in Portugal, California, and Australia, but they’re a first for France. As such, the teams attempting to contain the wildfires were ill-equipped to handle the unpredictable nature they bring. 

As one source described, “The fire in France’s southwest Gironde region started with northerly winds, then westerly, then southerly, then easterly, then back again to the south, then the west. . .” And the winds are so strong that they tend to suck up lit embers before pushing them along to start fires in new areas as well.

The end result is that the best firefighters can do is contain the flames rather than put them out. And they’re actually doing a pretty solid job of it, all things considered. But decisions made before the wildfires ever started have made it all but impossible to do much more. 

Can this problem be fixed?

When you read about the causes of the fires and how to prevent them in the future, climate change is typically the first thing that comes up. That’s not where I’d like to focus for today, though, and it’s not where decision makers in Europe—as well as Canada, the US, or anywhere else struggling with wildfires—should focus either.

I don’t say that to be a climate change denier. I’m not sufficiently versed in the research behind climate change to offer definitive conclusions in either direction—though I have studied it enough to be wary of those who speak with that level of confidence on the subject. 

Nor am I saying that to disregard the impact of the weather patterns that contribute to these fires as a result of the Earth heating up. Recognizing those shifts should not be controversial, even if attributing a cause can be. 

Instead, many sources that have discussed these fires and what can be done in the future argue that time and resources would be better spent addressing the reasons the fires spread so quickly, rather than on climate concerns that may have contributed to their start. And that’s particularly the case in Europe, where shifting demographics have led farmland and forests to grow unfettered after generations of small-scale cultivation by the people who once worked them. 

Stephen Pyne, a fire historian and professor emeritus at Arizona State University, notes that similar fires were common in the aftermath of World War II, when far fewer people were left to tend the land. While the shift today is the result of younger generations moving to the cities rather than the casualties of war, the end result is still that areas once cared for and cultivated have grown wild. 

And given that many of the forests and fields were designed for human purposes—roughly 2.5 million acres of French forests were grown for paper and timber—much of what’s there now is far more flammable than existed in earlier times. The Landes Forest near Bordeaux, for example, was planted with maritime pine, a species with resin-packed cones and easily flammable needles. 

When the climate was cooler and rain was more plentiful, the previous forestry techniques still worked despite the conditions of the fields and forests. However, strategies have not changed with the weather. 

As Alexander Held, a senior expert at the European Forest Institute, put it, 

It’s still this mindset of, if we only have enough well-trained and equipped and resourced people, we can get on top of this. And these fires are now showing us this is the wrong assumption.

Organized burning, thinning, and larger breaks in vegetation could help, but that’s a shift many seem hesitant to make. Until nations begin to focus more on preventing fires than putting them out, though, the summers to come could look far too similar to what’s going on now. And the same basic pattern is true in our own lives as well.

Spiritual application: The easiest way to fight sin

In the Sermon on the Mount, one of the aspects of Christ’s teachings that stands out most is the way he moves away from an emphasis on one’s actions—the traditional approach to combating sin in his culture—and instead focuses on the motivation behind those actions. Starting in chapter 5, he gives a series of six “You have heard it said…But I say to you” statements that remove any remaining doubt that his approach will differ from what his audience was accustomed to hearing. 

God wants more from us than a people focused on following the rules. He wants a people who truly desire to know him better and who follow his will out of love rather than obligation.

When we get to that point in our relationship with him, avoiding the big sins becomes much easier because the tiny sins appear so abhorrent that we don’t allow those fires to grow into something that can quickly escape our control. Christ’s teachings on anger—the first application of this principle in the Sermon—demonstrate this idea well (Matthew 5:21–26).

In those verses, Jesus equates nursed grudges and derogatory thoughts with murder. He’s not saying the consequences of those sins are the same, but he is drawing a connection regarding where the sinful actions begin. And the end result is the clear teaching that the best way to prevent sin is to address its root causes; to clear the underbrush that proves so flammable once that first spark comes. 

But while that idea is easy to understand in principle, putting it into practice is often far more difficult. 

So, take some time to ask the Holy Spirit to help you identify the kindling you’ve left untended. Where does sin flare up most frequently in your life? And what can you do now to surrender those areas to the Lord and allow him to help you clear away that underbrush before the next embers of temptation threaten to ignite them? 

It will always be easier to address sin where it starts than attempt to contain it once it has flared into something far more destructive. 

Let’s start today.

God is good

One of the most difficult choices faced by Christian parents in China is where to send their kids to school. The government mandates at least 9 years of education, and students who receive that education outside the established school system can’t gain admission to Chinese universities. Yet, by the time you get to high school, students are routinely in class from 7:30 in the morning to after 10:00 at night, and many leave the faith when they spend the vast majority of their time in an environment hostile to Christianity, with little time left for the church. However, waves of Chinese families are looking further south, to countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, where they have found a growing community of like-minded believers. 

Kingdom impact

Many families who have sought to educate their kids in Christian schools outside China have seen that influence expand beyond their own families. Many of these schools have grown to the point that they are attractive to Christian and non-Christian Chinese citizens living in Southeast Asia.  

Prayer point

Will you pray that these families are able to raise kids who love the Lord, and that their influence, both in the countries they now reside in and back home in China, would grow? 

Christianity Today has more on the story