Wildfires prompt climate reckoning

ATHENS－The summer of 2021 has not been easy for the whole world as unprecedented wildfires rage across the globe from Europe to Africa.

Forest fires are common during Greek summers, but the scale of the current fires has been exceptional.

Hundreds of firefighters were battling to control two massive wildfires in Greece on Wednesday, with one raging for nine straight days that have left hundreds homeless and caused incalculable damage.

With the assistance of a huge multinational force, Greek fire crews were fighting to beat blazes on the island of Evia and in the Peloponnese peninsula in rugged terrain.

"I think we can say that the fire fronts are slowly coming under control," said Yiannis Kontzias, mayor of the Evia town of Istiaia that has been under threat for days, to state broadcaster ERT.

More than 500 fires burned across the country in the last week.

In Russia, wildfires have ripped through Siberia's forests with growing intensity in recent years, which Russian weather officials and environmentalists have linked to climate change.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the emergencies ministry to increase the group for extinguishing fires and raise the intensity of the work of aviation in one of Siberia's hardest-hit region of Yakutia.

In the vast and sparsely populated region nearly five times the size of France, blazes in Yakutia have burned through almost 8.7 million hectares, according to Russia's forestry agency. The total burned area is quickly approaching the annual average of 8.9 million hectares for the entire country since 2000.

Buildings destroyed

In the United States, California's largest single wildfire in recorded history kept pushing through forestland as fire crews tried to protect rural communities from flames that have destroyed hundreds of homes.

Clear skies over parts of the month-old Dixie Fire have allowed aircraft to rejoin nearly 6,000 firefighters this week.

Heavy smoke reduced visibility on the fire's west end, while the east end saw renewed action as afternoon winds took hold, fire officials said.

Burning through bone-dry trees, brush and grass, the fire had destroyed more than 1,000 buildings, including nearly 550 homes, by Tuesday. Much of the small community of Greenville was incinerated during an explosive run of flames last week.

In North Africa, dozens of separate fires have raged through forest areas across northern Algeria since Monday night. At least 25 soldiers have died saving residents from the fires.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune tweeted that the soldiers were "martyrs" who saved 100 people from the fires in two areas of Kabyle, the region that is home to the Imazighen population. The defense ministry said 11 other soldiers were burned fighting the fires, with four of them seriously injured.

Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen, a professor at the University of Copenhagen, believes that it is becoming clearer that extreme weather events－in the form of violent storms, floods and forest fires－are linked to climate change.

"A decade ago, we could not say anything about whether a heat wave in southern Europe was climate change or completely natural fluctuations. Now we have many more studies and methodologies that allow us to comment on it," Christensen told Denmark's science website videnskab.dk.

Xinhua - Agencies