Experts believe that Europe has entered a new phase of forest fires, pointing to the powerful thunderstorm that struck southwestern France as a result of a forest fire as a clear example of the changing nature of these disasters.
According to them, European countries had not, until recently, witnessed events of this scale and nature.
Experts noted that firefighters in Spain and France are still struggling to control wildfires that have become more intense and unpredictable than any they have faced before. Some specialists even compare the energy released by these disasters to the impact of several atomic bombs.
Victor Risco de Dios, a professor of forestry engineering and climate change at the University of Lleida in Spain, says: "We have entered an era of fires that cannot be easily controlled. These fires are comparable in their power to the impact of several atomic bombs."
Experts indicate that fires have so far consumed about 116,000 hectares in France alone, an unprecedented record in the country's history, at a time when the forest fire season is still ongoing.
French President Emmanuel Macron noted that France had not experienced such suffering since World War II.
Due to the spread of forest fires, authorities in Spain and France were forced to evacuate approximately 300,000 people in total.
In addition, experts are recording huge environmental and economic losses as a result of this natural disaster, amid expectations that the situation may worsen in the coming period.
"It is difficult to predict the extent of this disaster," Risco de Dios concludes. "In the near future, it will not be possible to rule out catastrophic scenarios like those seen in California or Australia, where fires or fire clusters could cover hundreds of thousands of hectares, or even a million hectares."
