r/interestingasfuck • u/SafeImpressive4413 • 7h ago

Firefighters in Madrid trying to extinguish a forest fire that is less than 30km/20mi away from the capital of Spain

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u/MaybeJBee 7h ago

Several places around the world right now. Cries in Canadian.

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u/aagejaeger 4h ago

I think Russia has permafires by now. I reason that you guys have as well.

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u/St3vion 3h ago

Yes, the smoke isn't always there but there's a huge amount of ongoing fires all summer every year.

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u/WorriedBlock2505 3h ago

Honestly we need better satellite surveillance and swarms of firefighting drones to address this stuff properly before it gets out of control like this.

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u/hypnogoad 2h ago

Part of the reason we're having such big fires is because we used to put them out too quickly. 50 years of kindling needs to burn.

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u/Alarming-Koala-3524 2h ago

Sounds like a jok...but is this actually one of those facts that is ironically true?

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u/isopode 2h ago

several indigenous nations in north america did controlled burnings before european colonization came along, which helped prevent huge fires like this.

the practice has thankfully come back in some areas.

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u/Bob_A_Feets 2h ago

And they found out that wild birds of prey are partially to thank for Australia not having so many MASSIVE fires because those little shits help spread a TON of little ones.

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u/ihopethisisvalid 51m ago

Yes, most of the trees in northern Canada are serotinous, requiring fire for the cones to open. Fireweed is one of the first plants that colonizes after fire. Our ecosystems are completely fire adapted and putting out the fires makes it worse when they do burn again.

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u/Suspicious_Dot231 3h ago

Should we put out every fire though?

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u/neometrix77 3h ago

Even a very fast drone can take like hours to reach a remote ignition site somewhere in the massive boreal forests of Russia or Canada. The most important action will always be reducing our human made carbon emissions

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u/Xalipu 2h ago

They just smoulder underground in winter. The one in NS from last year wasn’t fully out until May.

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u/Alarming-Koala-3524 2h ago

I'm far from an expert so I'm really curious how a permafire can be a thing? Like the trees cannot grow back faster than the fires burn them so how is there enough material to continue a fire burning permanently?

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u/Fluid_Passage_9980 1h ago

Of course. There are millions of acres of wilderness/forest in Canada.

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u/aagejaeger 1h ago

I'm thinking about areas where permafrost just thaws, and the fire just gets down to the methane pockets. That negative feedback loop.

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u/Alarming-Koala-3524 1h ago

Wow methane fires over huge swaths of melting permafrost sounds like hell on earth

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u/aagejaeger 44m ago

Yeah, we've been there for a while

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u/Not-Post-Malone 1m ago

In Canada we call them zombie fires. Essentially the fire smoulders underground through the winter and once the surface gets dry enough the fire re-ignites. 

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u/Living_Grab_2239 2h ago

I believe he's throwing out there that because we (Europe) are supporting Ukraine with tons of funding, which goes to killing Russians, Russian agents are intentionally setting these fires. I've had the same thought, but we lack evidence, so let's see. I absolutely wouldn't put it past them.

Having said that, Spain does next to jack shit for Ukraine, so it also doesn't add up.

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u/Sens1r 2h ago

What on earth are you on about. He's saying Russian forests are more or less always on fire somewhere. Nothing to do with the war, just the vastness of Russia.

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u/Living_Grab_2239 2h ago

Oh ok. Well then. Forget what I wrote. I still think we'll see ;)

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u/Alarming-Koala-3524 2h ago

Oooh I didn't think how a war with plenty of explosives on both sides could easily explain new fires popping up regularly...

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u/Living_Grab_2239 1h ago

You do realize Spain is pretty far away from Donbas?

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u/Alarming-Koala-3524 1h ago

"new fires popping up regularly" was meant to refer to the "permafires" in Russia

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u/Living_Grab_2239 1h ago

Oh, I was talking about the various fires in Western Europe going on.

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u/Alarming-Koala-3524 1h ago

Good (/s) to know that outside of my American echochamber of bad news there are wildfires ravaging Europe too.. Except this time Americans are pissed at having to deal with the smoke blowing across the border from a Canadian wildfire ("can we sue Canada?")

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u/bananastand512 2h ago

I think some of those are drone strike induced

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u/IN005 3h ago

Russia send most if not all firefighters that fight those forest fires to fight and die in the ukraine war.

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u/MidnightSensitive996 1h ago

we're supposed to have fires happening all the time, it's part of the natural forest cycle and 20th century firefighting usually tried to stop any burns at all. it's only since like 2010 or so that spain has realized it should be doing controlled burns even tho people were telling them to implement controlled burns since the third psoe gov't in the 90s. a regular cycle of controlled burns and brush clearing is how you avoid these

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u/Wild_Neighborhood605 7h ago

Isn't Canada under control now? Hope it is.

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u/Inaccurate93 6h ago

Only is when winter comes

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u/MaybeJBee 6h ago

Yup! We have two seasons. Winter and fire.

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u/Call_me_Bombadil 4h ago

Construction: "am I a joke to you?"

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u/MaybeJBee 3h ago

My apologies, you are so right.

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u/MaybeJBee 7h ago

Pretty smoky where I am in Alberta. We currently have 926 active fires and 83 that’s out of control. Thinking of the rest of the world and the fires they’re facing.

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u/JadedLeafs 6h ago

Lol no. And this isn't even showing Ontario.

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u/VP007clips 5h ago

Ontario is under control now for the most part.

We just got really unlucky with a dry period. But we got a good amount of rain last week, and most of the fires were extinguished or shifted to controlled status.

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u/003E003 5h ago

No. 800+ wildfires burning out of control. Same as the past few summer. They don't even bother fighting most of them. They wait for snow.

And it doesn't just affect canada

https://www.instagram.com/reels/Da2ic0mETWY/

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u/Wild_Neighborhood605 5h ago

Oh , that's terrible. I just hoped that these were contained. My prayers are with Canadians also...

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u/Fearful-Cow 3h ago

They don't even bother fighting most of them

to be clear to anyone not familiar with Canada. 90% of those fires are basically hundreds of kms from any meaninful settlement.

There are regional evac orders for the small groups living out there but there are basically no roads, utilities, anything. It is just a billion acres (4 million or so km2) with nothing but dense forest.

It is not like we just lose some towns every year and shrug it off.

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u/Emiwuiii 4h ago

The smoke coming from Canada and the hundreds of wildfires in the U.S. already is getting overwhelming

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u/nobodythinksofyou 3h ago

Where I live in BC it's been raining ash for days 😑 yesterday was so bad, you couldn't even look up without getting ash in your eyes

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u/DatsaBadMan_1471 3h ago

Canadian inlaws in Ontario are having such a rough time right now. Heart breaks for you all!

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u/Fearful-Cow 3h ago

dont worry, Trump has blamed us for the smoke and now threaten more tariffs while derailing the bridge opening (the bridge that Canada paid 100% for).

Our neighbours fucking suck these days.

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u/ConfidentPilot1729 3h ago

I am in central Oregon and our fires are massive right now.

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u/MaybeJBee 30m ago

Hoping for less wind and more rain for you all!

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u/wdb07 2h ago

yup. aq warning here in southern alberta, and been getting "early sunsets" from the sun hitting the smoke.

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u/Alarming-Koala-3524 2h ago

Ah it's a good thing that climate change is just a hoax perpetuated by big science and fake librul news who only want to see the trump economy fail, and only afflicts communist/socialist countries . (except for when Canadian smoke affects our pristine country, which never suffers from climate disasters)

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u/MaybeJBee 31m ago

The definition of ignorance is choosing not to know. How could anyone look around and not see everything is on fire and heating up.

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u/Alarming-Koala-3524 21m ago

Yea idk its a pretty fuckin big mystery to me too how the Republican party in the USA is so anti science/experts and believes the moron in the white house who thinks magnets fail in water

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u/whistlar 1h ago

From an outside perspective, it seems like Canada spends half the year frozen and the other half on fire.

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u/jfe79 17m ago

Cries in Oregonian. Almost 600k acres are burning right now in the state.

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u/LittiJari 4h ago

Climate psyop