While Eastern Europe floods, and Portugal’s forest burn, high pressure weather with high winds raises sparks fires on the Mediterranean border between Spain and France.
Photographs made from a car – wildfire near the town of La Jonquera, Catalonia, Spain, near the frontier with France, on 14th September 2024. The fire, sparked off at a nearby motorway service stop, and fanned by fierce Tramontana winds, burned some 31 hectares and farmland and forest near the village of Agullana. As a result of the fire, the AP7/E15 motorway – a major transport artery which connects the north of France to Alicante, Spain, via Barcelona and Valencia, was closed, with traffic diverted to a national route (N-11), where trucks and cars still passed within 300m of the fire. Major traffic disruption was caused by the fire. The Catalan fire service, using 18 fire trucks, three helicopters and two planes, managed to stabilise the fire by evening.
One of the organisations I work for, the Global Climate and Health Alliance, says that “climate change is driving more extreme wildfires; meanwhile year on year, deforestation (and associated deliberate burning) contributes to climate change, destroying a vital carbon sink to clear land for industrial ranching and agriculture.”
It also says that “an increasing impact of forest and bush fires is the exposure of larger populations to wildfire smoke, for longer periods, and more often, with significant health impacts.”
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Copyright, Dave Walsh 2024