Race against time to contain wildfires in France and Spain – The Latest

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1:05We're entering the era of fires that we cannot extinguish. If you have a really wet winter followed by a very hot and dry summer, then you have huge, huge amounts of fuel that can be burned. Scientists talk about it turning forests into tinderboxes. When these little fires spark up, they can spread and morph into these gigantic blazes. From the Guardians today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Half. Wildfires are raging across France and Spain. Ajit Naranjan, you're our Europe environment correspondent. You've been covering this for us. Let's start with France, where the situation is particularly grave in the area around Bordeaux.

1:48Give us a sense of the scale of the wildfires that we're seeing and the impact on the city. Yeah, so France and Spain have both seen record breaking numbers of wildfires for this time of year. Particularly striking is that in France, so far this year, more land has burned than the country's record for a full fire season. Oh my goodness. And we still have more than a month of the summer left to go. These big blazers, as you said, they're concentrated in the southwest with this fire that's creeping closer and closer to Bordeaux. It's already burned through houses just kind of 20 kilometers away from the city.

2:24Yeah. And firefighters are struggling to get it under control. In Spain, meanwhile, we've got this situation where you've got multiple big blazers burning right across the country. And while the fire season in Spain isn't yet record-breaking compared to some of the previous horrific years we've seen, it's already led to the evacuations across France and Spain, hundreds of thousands of people. And entire towns have been put under lockdown because the smoke is so bad. Yeah, I mean, unbelievable images of the city of Bordeaux being sort of engulfed and people reporting how difficult it is to breathe and to walk outside in the city.

3:02And also those images of people in already evacuation centres that have been set up in town centres, schools, etc, to keep people safe with the number of evacuations. Exactly. We know that French President Emmanuel Macron is holding an emergency meeting this morning because temperatures are set to soar again later this week. How would you describe the response from the French government so far? So firefighters in both countries have sprung into action, but the scale of the blazers, both in terms of size and number, it has simply pushed them beyond their limits. I mean, this is an issue for firefighters across the world where when you've got one blaze, you know how to manage it.

3:45When you've got two or three blazers occurring simultaneously, then you're already being forced to divide your resources. And when it comes to these kind of mega blazers that are happening, then it reaches levels that are just very, very, very difficult to put out, particularly when the weather is so bad. There's been some critique internally in France about particularly one aspect of the lack of budget for fighting fires. And so one of these particular issues is that only seven of these 12 Canadair firefighting planes were actually available to tackle the blaze on Saturday because the others were being repaired.

4:17The fleet itself is fairly old. It leads to things like France and Spain having to call on the EU and request extra firefighting support. And so in France, I think the EU's deployed seven planes and four helicopters. And these are coming from countries as far away as Sweden, which is obviously used to very, very different conditions in terms of firefighting than a country like France is. And as far away as Turkey, in Spain, the EU has mobilized six planes. And one small saving grace one scientist told me is that although the fire season in Spain and France is particularly bad, Portugal has escaped some of the kind of horrific stuff it's seen in previous years.

4:57And so I think the EU says it's deployed 134 firefighters and 41 vehicles from Portugal. So here in the UK, we've had record-breaking temperatures in May and June, well in excess of 35 degrees on certain particularly hot days. We've got another heat wave this week, but it really pales in comparison when you look at neighbouring France, temperatures regularly in excess of 40 degrees, which is obviously extremely difficult for people living in densely populated cities like Paris or Bordeaux. Why have the heat waves been so acute this early in the summer and have led to these wildfires in France and Spain?

5:41One thing that people often do not realise about climate change is that although these numbers sound really small, when we talk about global heating has hit, on average across the globe, 1.3 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, and people, scientists are warning about, okay, we've got to limit climate change to 1.5 degrees C by the end of the century. These numbers sound very small, right? What they enable, though, when it comes to heat waves in particular, is this vast increase in the kind of most extreme heat that previously used to be very, very unlikely. What's specific about the wildfires, though, is that we also, in much of Western Europe, including the UK and Spain, had a really, really wet winter.

6:22And a wet winter, and in Spain, in many places that was followed by a wet spring, means that you've got a lot of water that helps plants grow. And on the surface, that sounds great. You want plants to be growing. You like greenery. It's really good for many, many things. But it's also more to burn if things then dry. If you have a really wet winter followed by a very hot and dry summer, which is exactly what we've had, then you have huge, huge amounts of fuel that can be burned. And scientists talk about it turning forests into tinderboxes. I think one scientist this morning in Spain said we're entering the era of fires that we cannot extinguish.

6:58and that's because when these little fires spark up and these happen for many reasons natural causes lightning strikes arsonists people being careless with campfires and so on when these fires spark and you get this like small flame they can spread and morph into these gigantic blazes because there is just more fuel that can be eaten up so the the spanish prime minister pedro sanchez gave this very stark warning over the weekend he said the entire iberian peninsula is suffering the effects of the climate emergency in a very specific way. I mean, he is one European leader who has been explicit about linking what is happening to the climate crisis.

7:38It feels like with more heat anticipated later in the summer, and then the super El Nino, which we discussed the last time we spoke, this weather phenomenon that will bring hugely high temperatures likely to come at the end of the year. Governments are going to be asked to make big changes in a very limited period of time, what needs to happen? I know that's a big question. No, I mean, it's a very big question, but it is one that thankfully scientists have laid out really clearly for us. And it should be said, they have been shouting at the top of their voices for well over a decade about this stuff.

8:13To start with maybe the most obvious solution, burning fewer fossil fuels would mean that we heat the planet less. It also comes with all the benefits and meaning we are less likely to die from all the air pollution and all the toxic fumes that we're breathing in that's kind of the background change that would need to happen to prevent this increase in severe fire weather that's turning southern Europe into a real hotspot for wildfires yeah um beyond that making sure that we prevent fires from spreading is possibly the single solution I've heard pushed the most by scientists in particularly in Spain and southern France and that means anything from creating fire breaks so consciously managing the land in a way that whether you're a homeowner who's on the edge of a field, that you just ensure that you've got a path that doesn't have any vegetation between your property and the green space.

9:03But of course, we're seeing fires that have got to an extent that means that such measures don't necessarily do much anymore because you've got these burning embers that spread across the landscape carried by the wind, particularly when you've got pine trees. I spoke to firefighters in Croatia who'd made the point that when you've got these pine forests which have been planted across Europe, southern Europe, when they go up in flames, the pine cones act like what one of them described to me as grenades because they catch fire and they explode and they send these little bits of burning particles.

9:32And that means they can cross roads, they can cross rivers, they can cross these natural breaks that in theory should be preventing a fire from getting from one place to another. I mean, Ajit, in the context of everything we've been talking about in terms of the climate emergency, see these natural disasters as a result of that and global heating more broadly, it feels like a trivial question. But I think one that a lot of people will be asking is whether it is safe to travel to these places at peak summer holiday seasons with their families. Do we know about what the advice from French and Spanish governments has been on that point?

10:08The authorities in both countries and this is common in areas where extreme weather events are happening they don't want to put people off from coming partly because these are significant industries for their economy tourism is a sector that does bring in a lot of money and so if you are a regional authority in a wildfire ravaged region it feels difficult to turn people away knowing that that then reduces the kind of tax euros that you'll have to be able to kind of invest say in firefighting services so yeah two issues here one is that tourists often are very much less familiar with the risks and that means that if you've come from a chilly northern european city and you've come for a week in southern france or spain and you a don't speak the language perhaps so you're not paying attention to the warnings that are coming out from evacuation alerts and so on b if you don't take the basic precautions that locals might take in terms of maybe not getting really drunk in the middle of the day during 40 degree heat yeah in a dangerous area i mean it almost sounds silly but these are really things that do matter and do affect how many people will end up living or dying yeah then i guess the other aspect to mention is that one contributor to these heat waves getting worse to these wildfires getting worse is the tourism itself i mean it's a aviation is about between two and four percent of planet heating emissions and in rich countries it ends up being a much bigger share of how much we actually pollute and worsen the problem.

11:38And so tourism is almost by necessity having to have a rethink of how it exists in these places that used to be seen as kind of a hot, fun break away from maybe the grey and dreary monotony of the UK or Germany. But what seems likely to happen from the tourism experts I've spoken to is not that suddenly these regions will become no-go zones, it's much more that people will just shift their patterns to maybe going in spring or autumn instead of during the peak of the summer, rather than seeing this kind of whole-scale collapse of tourism in southern Spain or southwest France. Well, Ajit, thank you so much for your time.

12:15Thank you. That's it for today. My huge thanks again to Ajit Naranjan, The Guardian's Europe environment correspondent. You can keep up with all his reporting, as well as our full coverage of this story over at theguardian.com. And I really recommend listening to our sister podcast, Politics Weekly, where Pippa Creera and Kieran Stacey are talking about our new Prime Minister Andy Burnham's meeting with Wladimir Zelensky, as well as his plans for social care. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. Today in Focus will be back in your feeds as usual tomorrow morning. The Latest will be back tomorrow night.

12:47This episode was produced by Angus Neill. The senior producer was Ryan Ramgobin. The executive producer was Zoe Hitch. And it was presented by me, Lucy Hoff.

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