Blaze – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

Firefighters in Turkey fought for a fourth day on Saturday to contain dozens of forest fires as rapidly spreading fires forced the evacuation of popular resorts and dozens of rural areas along the Mediterranean coast.

The fires, which authorities say may have been caused by arson or human negligence, killed at least six people and injured about 200 others on Saturday, officials said.

When tourists were forced to flee hotels, some on boats, as the flames drew closer, rural residents watched the fires burn down their homes, kill their livestock and destroy their businesses.

“Our lungs burn, our future burns,” said Muhittin Bocek, the mayor of Antalya, a holiday town, in a telephone interview from the devastated city of Manavgat, about 80 kilometers east of the coast.

The flames are part of a broader pattern of forest fires ravaging the Mediterranean this summer, with areas in Lebanon, Syria, Greece, Italy and Cyprus also battling fast-paced fires.

They’re also the latest in a string of extreme weather events around the world – from deadly floods in Europe and China to raging fires in the United States, Canada, and Siberia – that scientists believe may be related to climate change due to global changes Are associated with warming.

Cagatay Tavsanoglu, a biology professor specializing in fire ecology at Hacettepe University in Ankara, said fires in the Mediterranean area happen annually, but the magnitude of the fires that year should serve as a warning.

“Many fires could not be extinguished and under the influence of dry winds they burned too quickly,” said Tavsanoglu. “These are just the first signs of what climate change would do to the Mediterranean in the future.”

For models showing a global temperature increase of three degrees Celsius (or an additional 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), the upper end of the forecast, the average area burning in southern Europe would double each year, according to a research paper published in 2018 in Nature was published.

And even if the warming stays below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement, 40 percent more land could burn, the researchers warned.

Cyprus suffered some of the worst fires in decades this summer, killing at least four people. Authorities in Greece this week evacuated areas north of Athens as forest fires threatened homes near the capital. And in Italy, the island of Sardinia experienced “an unprecedented disaster” this month, the region’s authorities said.

In Lebanon, where the state has basically ceased to function and the authorities took little action this summer to avoid the fires, a teenager died this week as the fires spread to the north of the country and Syria.

Extreme weather

Updated

July 30, 2021, 9:35 p.m. ET

In the Akkar district, videos shared online showed dystopian scenes of the fires that spread through the woods on Wednesday. Firefighters, the Lebanese military, civil protection officials and volunteers have worked to contain them.

The fires worsened the suffering of many people in Lebanon, who live with daily shortages of fuel and medicine, countless power outages and the aftermath of an unprecedented financial crisis.

More than 100 communities are exposed to a high risk of forest fire, said the Lebanese agricultural research institute this week.

In Turkey, the fires broke out on Wednesday in Manavgat, a city in the southern province of Antalya. As of Friday, there were fires in more than 70 other locations across the country, said the Turkish Forestry Directorate.

Some of the fires were brought under control, but three people died in Manavgat and a fourth in Marmaris, another popular resort.

The fires also spread to the resort of Bodrum, where at least two hotels were evacuated.

The Turkish authorities are still investigating the cause of the fires, but on Thursday the government’s communications director Fahrettin Altun called them an “attack”.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said police and intelligence officers were investigating arson allegations. “You can’t dismiss that,” Erdogan said to reporters in Istanbul on Friday. “Because it is almost at the same time, in different places.”

Turkey has used around 4,000 firefighters, hundreds of vehicles and three aircraft to fight fires, according to Agriculture Minister Bekir Pakdemirli.

However, for some local residents, the response has been slow and inadequate.

“Does the Turkish Republic only have three planes?” A Manavgat resident yelled at Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu when he visited the city on Thursday evening.

Mr. Cavusoglu spoke against a backdrop of gorgeous scenery, and earlier in the day televisions showed entire districts left empty and smoking, full of charred houses under orange skies.

Mr. Bocek, the mayor of Antalya, said every fourth neighborhood in Manavgat must be evacuated.

In a community that is heavily dependent on agriculture and ranching, most residents are still not allowed to return home because the fires are not under control.

According to Turkish media reports, a crowd attacked two people under high tension on Thursday, accusing them of starting the fires. When the military police stepped in to protect the two, a mob tried to bring them back to no avail.

While in some places the anger boiled, in others there had been no time to ponder who should be to blame.

“When the flames came over us, we could only save the cow,” said Nuray Canbolat, a resident of Kozan district in southern Adana province, in a television interview with the state news agency Anadolu. “We just saved our lives.”

SYDNEY, Australia – The first big fire of the Australian forest fire season has now blackened roughly half of Fraser Island, an idyllic haven north of Brisbane known for its golden beaches and abundant biodiversity.

With evacuation orders reaching residents on Monday, Australians who had hoped there wasn’t much to burn after last year’s colossal fires are now fighting with a brutal reminder: In a vast country that is at risk of fire and particularly vulnerable to The risk of record-breaking infernos never goes away.

In fact, it continues to increase.

“I’m sure it’s a hit for us and everyone watching,” said Jack Worcester, 34, whose family owns Cathedrals on Fraser, a campground that was recently evacuated. “There is currently no normal for a fire season – any fire season can be pretty serious.”

At this point last year, desiccated forests outside Sydney had been burning for weeks, covering the city’s sky with an orange-gray haze. But while this year (so far) feels less overwhelming, one question hangs on the mind of many Australians, and it’s the same question the Californians asked a few months ago and will be asking again next year: How bad is it going? to get?

Fires are usually measured and recorded using hard statistics – acres burned, homes and lives lost – but before counting there is an impressionistic mapping of the risk, shaped by terrain, climate, human activity and chance.

This year’s Australian seasonal prospect maps show a broad red amoeba for areas of above-average danger that run through the grassy plains of central New South Wales, the southeastern state of which Sydney is the capital. But you have to dig deeper to see that many other areas are also at risk.

For example, Fraser Island is marked as “Normal Fire Potential”. The fire that is now burning, pulling firefighters ashore and on planes to put out the flames and close the island to visitors, is believed to have been caused by an illegal bonfire lit by tourists on October 14th has been.

“By and large, fire is a natural part of the Australian landscape. Even if we say the year has normal or below average risk, it doesn’t mean there is no risk, ”said Naomi Benger, climatologist with the government’s Bureau of Meteorology. “It means the risk is as high as in an average year.”

Due to climate change, she added, the average risk of fire is increasing.

“It only takes a day or two to be disastrous,” she said. “People shouldn’t be complacent.”

La Niña, a large change in tropical Pacific temperatures that affects global weather patterns, is the dominant factor in the 2020-21 Australian fire season. La Niña brings cooler water closer to the ocean surface in the central and eastern tropical Pacific, and this year has provided above-average rainfall for most of the country.

Thunderstorms and long spring weeks have filled the reservoirs, relieving farmers in New South Wales and Queensland after many years of drought. But the soaked rains have also created fields of grass in the plains west of the Great Dividing Range, the mountain range that runs up and down the east coast of Australia.

With just a few hot, dry days, these grasses turn green to brown, making them as easy to light as a dry piece of paper, maybe even easier. This creates a particularly unpredictable and deadly danger.

“The main difference is the intensity; Grass fires are less intense than forest fires in general, but they spread very, very quickly, ”said Richard Thornton, who heads the Cooperative Research Council on Bushfires and Natural Hazards and makes the maps that most countries use to assess each fire base season. “They are certainly moving faster than you can run or walk in front of them, and they are very much dominated by the wind.”

In 1969, a dozen grass fires near the town of Lara killed 23 people, including 17 trapped in their cars on the highway. Some of them tried to escape the fire and failed.

Grass fires also generate enormous amounts of radiant heat. When willow trees caught fire along the surrounding woods in Batlow town in January, the heat from the flames in the grass melted some of the fire trucks and firefighter helmets.

“Because they can move quickly and change direction quickly, people can easily be caught and overrun by a grass fire,” Thornton said. “We’ve seen it before.”

Climate connections

La Niña is just one factor among many. Other weather forces have created drier than normal conditions in places like tropical Queensland.

Fraser Island saw fewer thunderstorms than usual in November, and these dry conditions were exacerbated by the heat. Last month was Australia’s hottest November ever. Projections also suggest that December through February maximum temperatures in parts of southeast and western Australia and along the Queensland coast will likely be above the long-term mean.

That means a higher risk. The onset of a heat wave or two or three this summer could dry out many areas and make fires even more difficult to fight.

Scientists argue that this is climate change in action. As global average temperatures have risen by one degree Celsius since the pre-industrial era, variability in weather patterns is increasing, particularly in Australia, the world’s driest inhabited continent.

What once looked like an anomaly can quickly become the new normal.

“With the Australian fire season last year combined with that in California last year, it can be said that this is what the future will be because of climate change,” said Thornton. “Last year’s fires were unprecedented, but they are no longer like that. Now that we’ve had these fires, they have to be part of the planning. “

A recent report by an independent Royal Commission on fires last year recognized that climate change had already significantly increased the risk of natural disasters in Australia. Numerous changes to fire fighting in the country have been recommended, calling for more aircraft and better coordination of data and communications equipment.

Very little of what the Commission requested has been put into practice or even approved. Prime Minister Scott Morrison goes on to claim that his administration’s efforts to combat climate change – widely viewed as overwhelming and weak by climate researchers in the country – are sufficient.

Emergency managers say the bigger challenge, whether in the US or Australia, is getting the general population in fire-prone areas to understand the changing environment and the risks.

“It’s hard,” said Mr. Thornton. “You don’t want to face the fact that your place of residence is risky.”

Until they can see the fire and the smoke.

Mr. Worcester, the campsite owner on Fraser Island, said that at one point he was exposed to flames close enough for a rock to reach.

“I stood on our property during the ceasefire and watched it be less than 100 meters north of us,” he said. “It was 15 meters tall.”

He said he now intends to buy his own personal fire fighting equipment “just to calm down”. And yet, he already knows that the relief will be short-lived.

The campsite, which was 40 percent full when it had to be evacuated and is now being asked to cancel reservations left and right, is surrounded on three sides by bushland, with the sea in front.

“The vegetation will have grown beyond what it was this year,” Worcester said. “We’ll have two or three years less risk, then another eight years of high risk.”

“At the end of the day,” he added, “when it’s really serious, there is only so much you can do.”