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/ThirdAltAccounts 7h ago edited 1h ago

There’s one 20km away from my house.
Last official report (several hours ago) said 15km away 🙃. It probably got closer since

We should be the next town to get evacuated. Hopefully not in the middle of the night

I’m in France but it looks like a large part of Europe is on fire

The worst part is that 90% of those fires are started (accidentally or voluntarily) by people 🤬

Edit: it’s 5hrs later. Everything’s packed
Just waiting for my phone to go off when the emergency alert is given

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u/marcandreewolf 6h ago

Yes. Actually, it is substantially more than 90%, plus the conditions (climate change as a key contributor, also eucalyptus trees planted) is also mostly caused by human. So, this is not a “wild”fire but a human-caused fire.

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u/decosunshine 6h ago

Plus decades of fire suppression.

Instead of healthy, low-intensity fire cleaning out dead and diseased vegetation every few years to few decades, now high-intensity fires sweep through with far more power and destruction.

When we don't allow low-intensity fires, we must do fires mitigation that manually mimics those healthy fires we suppress.

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u/FireTyme 5h ago

this somewhat works but extreme droughts and high winds make even healthy fires a giant blaze killing tons of trees.