Some observed the fires looked like a scene from Armageddon. The infernos destroyed buildings and forests alike, where the epic heat wave in Europe has hit record levels in many parts of the bloc. The heat has already led to thousands of deaths. However, the fires are not just due to the record heat.
Notably, last week, the famous Fontainebleau Forest near Paris was set alight, destroying 2,000 hectares (4,942 acres) of woodland. Approximately 1,000 people were evacuated, and 850 emergency firefighters were deployed — efforts to end the fire could take weeks.
The latest data from France's Ministry of Agriculture says nine out of 10 wildfires are caused by people. Often it's campfires, unextinguished cigarettes or similar negligence. That was exacerbated by the extreme heat this year in France and Spain, which in many cases turned scrub grassland into a tinderbox. It's also true that both countries have regulations that prohibit clearing of certain protected lands, according to information from each country. "Policies of nature restoration and building have made it hard in some cases to clear the brush that piles up," Daniel Lacalle, chief economist at Madrid-based investment company Tressis, told Fox News Digital.
The causes of fires in the U.S. are quite similar to those in France. According to data from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) and the U.S. Forest Service, 85% of fires are caused by people. However, the total wildfire burns in the U.S. from lightning-caused fires tends to burn more acreage because they often strike in remote, hard-to-reach areas.
France’s Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said experts found 10 points around a little more than half of a mile radius that were used for ignition, according to a report by France Insider. It also found that pattern "suggests a voluntary origin," the minister reportedly said.
France 24 reported that dozens of people have been arrested across the nation for either accidentally or deliberately starting fires. On a visit to the Fontainebleau forest last week, French President Emmanuel Macron said the country "has never faced so many outbreaks of fire across the country since the end of World War II." He added, according to the France 24 report, "Here, as everywhere else in France, there will be zero tolerance" for arsonists, "because it is, of course, our national territory that is under attack every time a fire breaks out."
Meanwhile, Spain has been dealing with three separate wildfires, one of which has been stopped. A fire in Zaragoza destroyed 12,000 hectares (29,653 acres) and resulted in the evacuation of six separate villages. Fires in Madrid and Guadalajara impacted at least 2,000 people. "The speed of these fires is something that even the most experienced firefighters are saying they have never seen anything like this," Lacalle told Fox News Digital.
A fire in the Spanish Andalusia region killed at least 13 people, including a 93-year-old woman who was injured in the fire at Los Gallardos.
Spain has vast areas of unused land with most of the population living in cities. "Some unused areas have not been cleaned up," Lacalle told Fox News Digital. "Because they have uncleared scrub land, there is a higher likelihood of a disastrous fire." That uncleared scrub that gets dried out by an extreme heat wave effectively creates a tinderbox that ignites quickly, even with a partially smoked cigarette.
The number of people exposed to wildfires has grown by an average of 382,700 per year during the period from 2002 to 2021, an increase of 40%, according to a study by the University of East Anglia in England. The study says, "This surge in human exposure was driven mainly by population growth and migration into fire-prone landscapes." Over the same period, the amount of land burned decreased by 26%, according to the UEA study.
