Tag Archives: Wildfires

Greeks urged to use less power as worst heatwave in decades tests grid

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greek authorities urged citizens to conserve electricity as the worst heatwave in more than 30 years pushed the power system to its limits on Monday and wildfires continued to burn in many areas.

With the weather service forecasting temperatures as high as 44 Celsius (111 Fahrenheit) this week, energy authorities have warned that power demand will skyrocket, testing the capacity of an electricity grid already burdened by more than 3 million holiday makers during the summer tourist season.

“We’re dealing with the worst heatwave since 1987,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said after attending a meeting at a power management center. “Everything humanly possible has been done to secure the country’s power supply. But we are also asking consumers to help us.”

As Europe’s summer of extreme weather continued, Greek firefighters have tackled more than 100 forest fires in the last 24 hours, including one on the island of Rhodes, just across the Strait of Marmara from Turkey, where fires have killed at least 8 people.

Authorities advised people to limit power usage at peak times in the afternoon and evening to prevent the electricity system collapsing, with households and businesses turning up air conditioners to seek relief from the brutal heat.

Greece’s power grid operator IPTO might ask big industries to voluntarily disconnect from the grid for a few hours and seek to import power from neighboring countries.

More than 1,000 people died during the week-long 1987 heatwave and authorities have opened air conditioned rooms for the homeless.

“It’s just very hot. I am not used to it. It’s been a lovely day but very, very hot,” said Gordon Teahy, a tourist from Scotland, sitting in the shade of a tree outside the Acropolis of Athens, which was shut for part of the day on Monday to protect visitors from the heat.

(Reporting by Phoebe Fronista and Angeliki Koutantou)

Three dead as wildfires blaze on southern Turkish coast

By Mert Ozkan

MANAVGAT, Turkey (Reuters) -Three people died in a forest fire in southern Turkey on Thursday where authorities were battling multiple blazes for a second day amid suspicions of arson, the country’s AFAD disaster agency and the agriculture minister said.

Dozens of villages as well as some hotels were evacuated, and television footage showed burnt buildings and people fleeing across fields as firefighters on the ground and in helicopters tried to contain a blaze in Manavgat, 75 km (45 miles) east of the Mediterranean resort of Antalya.

Officials have said that more than 60 wildfires have erupted across 17 provinces on Turkey’s Aegean and Mediterranean coasts this week, with the presidency vowing to hold to account those responsible for the “attacks.”

Of those wildfires, 36 have been contained, but firefighting efforts for the remaining 17 continue, with more than 140 people requiring treatment or suffering property damage, according to AFAD.

Agriculture Minister Bekir Pakdemirli said an 82-year-old man had been found dead during the evacuation of Kepezbeleni, 16 kilometers northeast of Manavgat, and two people were found dead in Degirmenli, 20 kilometers east of Manavgat.

He said 18 villages and districts had been evacuated in Antalya, along with 16 others in neighboring provinces of Adana and Mersin, as fires spread around Manavgat on Wednesday, fanned by strong winds in hot weather. Authorities also evacuated a Manavgat hospital.

Buildings including a hotel in the Aegean resort of Marmaris were evacuated due to the blaze, state broadcaster TRT Haber said. Footage showed two separate fires near residential areas in the Aegean summer hotspots of Bodrum, where another hotel was evacuated, and Didim.

Pakdemirli said 35 aircrafts, 457 vehicles, and 4,000 personnel were involved in firefighting efforts, as separate wildfires raged in the provinces of Osmaniye, Kayseri, Kocaeli, Adana, Mersin and Kutahya.

“Our struggle to contain (the fires) continues, and surely we will contain them. But this may take some time,” he said.

The timing of the various wildfires has raised concerns of arson, with the presidency’s communications director Fahrettin Altun saying investigations were launched to determine the cause of the fires.

“Those responsible will be held to account for the attacks they mounted on our nature and forests as soon as possible,” Altun said on Twitter.

Turkey’s southern Mediterranean coast is known for its scorching summer heat, which often causes wildfires. Officials have said the latest fires are the biggest to date.

Turkey has battled a series of disasters caused by extreme weather conditions this summer, including flash floods last week that killed six people in the Black Sea region.

(Additional reporting by Yesim Dikmen and Ezgi Erkoyun in Istanbul, Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara; Writing by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Dominic Evans, Catherine Evans, Timothy Heritage and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Southern Europe battles wildfires as north cleans up after floods

ATHENS (Reuters) – Wildfires burned in regions across southern Europe on Monday, fueled by hot weather and strong winds, as some northern countries cleaned up after a weekend of torrential rain and flooding.

In Greece, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said firefighters had battled around 50 fires during the past 24 hours and it was likely there would be more with meteorologists warning that a further heatwave was in prospect.

“I want to emphasize that August remains a difficult month,” he said. “That is why it is important for all of us, all state services, to be on absolute alert until the firefighting period is formally over.”

Fire service officials said negligence on farms and construction sites had been behind several incidents, many of which were in the southern Peloponnese region. No casualties were reported.

Conditions in southern Europe were in sharp contrast to the torrential rainstorms that lashed northern countries from Austria to Britain following the catastrophic flooding in Germany and neighboring countries last week.

On the Italian island of Sardinia, firefighting planes from France and Greece reinforced local aircraft battling blazes across the island where more than 4,000 hectares of forest were burnt and more than 350 people evacuated.

In Sicily, fires broke out near the western town of Erice.

In Spain, the northeastern region of Catalonia saw more than 1,500 hectares destroyed near Santa Coloma de Queralt, forcing dozens to be evacuated, although the blazes were 90% stabilized on Monday, firefighters and authorities said.

In Lietor, in the central east region of Castilla-La Mancha, more than 2,500 hectares burned during the weekend before being brought under control, authorities said.

So far this year, wildfires have burned across 35,000 hectares in Spain, still some way off the 138,000 hectares burned in 2012, the worst year of the past decade.

(Reporting by Emma Pinedo Gonzalez in Madrid, Lefteris Papadimas and Angeliki Koutantou in Athens and Emily Roe in Rome; writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Biden ups firefighter pay, pushes climate spending as U.S. braces for wildfires

By Jarrett Renshaw and Steve Holland

(Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden announced pay raises for federal firefighters on Wednesday and said the United States was behind in its preparations for a potential record number of forest fires this year because of drought and high temperatures.

Biden’s remarks at a virtual meeting with governors of western states sought to show the White House is treating wildfires – which have grown by at least 100 incidents each year since 2015 – are no less a national emergency than hurricanes.

As climate change makes regions like the U.S. western states more arid, wildfires have grown more frequent and ferocious.

At the same time, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management face staffing shortages accelerated by low pay and competition from state and local fire departments.

Biden said he would raise the pay of federal firefighters to at least $15 an hour and bonuses would be paid for those working on the front lines.

The 15,000 federal firefighters, who battle wildfires on federal land, include thousands of seasonal workers who start at roughly $13 an hour and rely on overtime and hazard pay to make ends meet.

The White House also seeks to convert seasonal firefighting jobs to full-time to meet greater demand.

“Climate change is driving a dangerous confluence of extreme heat and prolonged drought. We’re seeing wildfires of greater intensity that move with more speed,” that last well beyond the traditional months of the fire season, Biden said.

“That’s a problem for all of us.”

Biden and fellow Democrats seek billions of dollars from Congress to blunt climate change.

“The truth is we’re playing catch up. This is an area that has been under-resourced, but that’s going to change if we have anything to do with it,” Biden said.

Some Republicans have played down the severity of climate change, with some branding it a hoax.

A bipartisan infrastructure bill includes nearly $50 billion in drought, wildfire, flood, and multi-hazard resilience programs, the White House said on Wednesday, while Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell upped pressure on fellow Republicans not to back it if it was linked with a second spending measure.

The White House meeting with governors included Republicans and Democrats alike from California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming and other western states.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw and Steve Holland; additional reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Heather Timmons and Howard Goller)

Brutal heatwave to descend on U.S. West, prompting fire warnings

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A heatwave already punishing parts of the U.S. Southwest on Monday was expected to move into California this week, prompting the forecasters to warn of health and fire dangers.

A high-pressure ridge that built over southwestern deserts over the past few days is responsible for the unusually blistering heat this early in the year, National Weather Service meteorologist Karleisa Rogacheski said.

“Today last day of seasonable weather in California,” Rogacheski said.

California saw balmy weather on Monday, with temperatures in the upper 80’s and low 90’s Fahrenheit (30-35°C), but forecasts called for warming on Tuesday, spiking into the triple digits by Thursday and lasting several days.

The weather service issued an excessive heat warning for parts of southwest Arizona, including Phoenix, on Monday, predicting “dangerously hot conditions” at least through Saturday.

“Very High Heat Risk. Increase in heat-related illnesses, including heat cramps, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke. Heat stroke can lead to death,” the NWS said in the advisory.

California’s dry winter left forests and brush parched, prompting worries that the heat wave could touch off wildfires.

Wildfires scorched more than 6,500 square miles (17,000 square km) of land in 2020, destroying hundreds of Californian homes during a particularly fierce fire season.

The baking weather could also strain California’s power grid as residents crank up air conditioning units across the state.

Experts say the heatwave forecast for this week, brought on by the early high pressure system, could not be blamed directly on climate change.

“It difficult to tie any one particular event to climate change,” said Eric Schoening, a meteorologist in the Salt Lake City office of the National Weather Service. “But studies show that as the climate changes and it gets warmer, we will see more of these anomalous events over time.”

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

‘Big risk’: California farmers hit by drought change planting plans

By Norma Galeana and Christopher Walljasper

FIREBAUGH, Calif. (Reuters) – Joe Del Bosque is leaving a third of his 2,000-acre farm near Firebaugh, California, unseeded this year due to extreme drought. Yet, he hopes to access enough water to produce a marketable melon crop.

Farmers across California say they expect to receive little water from state and federal agencies that regulate the state’s reservoirs and canals, leading many to leave fields barren, plant more drought-tolerant crops or seek new income sources all-together.

“We’re taking a big risk in planting crops and hoping the water gets here in time,” said Del Bosque, 72.

Agriculture is an important part of California’s economy and the state is a top producer of vegetables, berries, nuts and dairy products. The last major drought from 2012 to 2017 reduced irrigation supplies to farmers, forced strict household conservation measures and stoked deadly wildfires.

California farmers are allocated water from the state based on seniority and need, but farmers say water needs of cities and environmental restrictions reduce agricultural access.

Nearly 40% of California’s 24.6 million acres of farmland are irrigated, with crops like almonds and grapes in some regions needing more water to thrive.

“I’m going to be reducing some of our almond acreage. I may be increasing some of our row crops, like tomatoes,” said Stuart Woolf, who operates 30,000 acres, most of it in Western Fresno County. He may fallow 30% of his land.

Del Bosque, who grows melons, asparagus, sweet corn, almonds and cherries, said his operation could lose more than half a million dollars in income, and put many of his 700 workers out of work. He and other farmers say drought has been exacerbated by California’s lack of investment in water storage infrastructure over the last 40 years.

“Fundamentally, a storage project is paid for by the people who want the water,” said Jeanine Jones, drought manager for California’s Department of Water Resources. “All we can do is deliver what mother nature provides.”

New dams face environmental restrictions meant to protect endangered fish and other wildlife, and don’t solve near-term water needs, said Ernest Conant, regional director of the Bureau of Reclamation, California-Great Basin region, the federal agency that overseas dams, canals and water allocations in the Western United States.

“We simply don’t have enough water to supply our agricultural users,” said Conant. “We’re hopeful some water can be moved sooner than October, but there’s no guarantees.”

Water scarcity threatens Del Bosque’s watermelon crop, which is due to be harvested in August. But it also has dire consequences for those planting it.

“If there is no water, there is no work. And for us farm workers, how are we going to support the family?” said 57-year-old Pablo Barrera, who was planting watermelons for Del Bosque.

Woolf said as the state continues to restrict water access, he’s exploring ways to generate income off the land he can no longer irrigate, including installing solar arrays and planting Agave, normally grown in Mexico to make tequila.

“You’ve got to absorb all of your farming costs on the few acres that you’re farming,” he said. “How do we maximize the value of the land that we are not farming?”

(Reporting by Norma Galeana in Firebaugh, California and Christopher Walljasper; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Diane Craft)

U.S. proposes big increase in forest management to tackle wildfires

By Nichola Groom

(Reuters) – The United States must double or quadruple the rate at which it thins and removes dead wood from its forests to reduce the threat of wildfires that have become more frequent and severe due to climate change, the Biden administration said on Thursday.

The call for a more ambitious forest management program comes after a record wildfire season in 2020 that burned more than 10 million acres, nearly half of which were on lands owned by the U.S. Forest Service.

The yearly blazes have grown worse in recent years because global warming has brought warmer temperatures and periods of drought, and also because decades of lax forest treatment practices have led to a build-up of dead trees and brush.

“Forest Service and other research scientists have determined that this current level of treatment is not enough to keep pace with the scale and scope of the wildfire problem,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said in a document laying out the department’s climate change strategy.

The USDA, which manages the 193 million acres of Forest Service land, said forest treatment rates need to rise by between two- and four-fold. That would result in an additional 50 million acres of federal, tribal and private lands, primarily in Western U.S. states, being treated in the next 19 years, it said.

The Forest Service treated 2.65 million acres in 2020 to reduce the dead wood that fuels wildfire.

The agency also said it would increase reforestation efforts to help boost forests’ ability to sequester carbon dioxide. Forests now sequester the equivalent of 14% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, the report said, a level which the agency said could increase by 20%.

Strategies to remove carbon from the atmosphere are regarded as critical to meeting U.S. President Joe Biden’s goal to decarbonize the U.S. economy by 2050.

(Reporting by Nichola Groom; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

2020 likely world’s second hottest year, U.N. says

By Emma Farge

GENEVA (Reuters) – This year is on track to be the second hottest on record, behind 2016, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Wednesday.

Five data sets currently place 2020, a year characterized by heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and raging hurricanes, as the second warmest since records began in 1850.

“2020 is very likely to be one of the three warmest years on record globally,” the Geneva-based U.N. agency said in its State of the Global Climate in 2020 report.

Stoked by extreme heat, wildfires flared across Australia, Siberia and the United States this year, sending smoke plumes around the globe.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a speech at Columbia University in New York that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are to blame and policies have yet to rise to the challenge.

“To put it simply the state of the planet is broken,” Guterres said. “Humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal,” he said.

A less visible sign of change was a surge in marine heat to record levels, with more than 80% of the global ocean experiencing a marine heatwave, the WMO said.

“2020 has, unfortunately, been yet another extraordinary year for our climate,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas, urging more efforts to curb the emissions.

Greenhouse gas concentrations climbed to a new record in 2019 and have risen so far this year despite an expected drop in emissions due to COVID-19 lockdowns, the WMO said last month.

The latest WMO report said the global mean temperature was around 1.2 degrees Celsius above the 1850-1900 baseline between January and October this year, placing it second behind 2016 and marginally ahead of 2019.

Hot years have typically been associated with El Niño, a natural event that releases heat from the Pacific Ocean. However, this year coincides with La Niña which has the opposite effect and cools temperatures.

The WMO will confirm the data in March 2021.

A climate pact agreed in Paris five years ago compels countries to make efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, above which scientists warn of catastrophic climate change.

While it is not the same as crossing that long-term warming threshold, the WMO says there is at least a one in five chance of temperatures temporarily, on an annual basis, exceeding that level by 2024.

Guterres said that last year natural disasters related to climate change cost the world $150 billion, and that air and water pollution are killing 9 million people annually. He urged world leaders to align global finance behind the Paris pact, to commit to reaching net zero emissions, and to fund efforts to adapt to climate change.

(Reporting by Emma Farge; additional reporting by Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Mark Potter and Lisa Shumaker)

Record California wildfires burn over four million acres

By Adrees Latif

NAPA, Calif. (Reuters) – Wildfires in California have burned more than 4 million acres (1.6 million hectares) in 2020, over twice the previous record for any year and an area larger than Connecticut, the state’s fire agency reported on Sunday.

The most-populous U.S. state has suffered five of its six largest wildfires in history this year as heat waves and dry-lightning sieges coincided with drier conditions that climate scientists blame on global warming.

At least 31 people have died in this year’s fires and over 8,454 homes and other structures have been destroyed, Cal Fire said in a statement.

California’s previous record burn area was nearly 2 million acres in 2018 when the state had its most deadly and destructive wildfire that killed at least 85 civilians and destroyed nearly 19,000 structures in and around the mountain town of Paradise.

“There’s no words to describe what is taking place and what continues to take place,” said Cal Fire spokesman Scott McLean. “It goes to show how dry the state is and how volatile the vegetation is.”

California suffered a prolonged drought from around 2010 to 2017, causing diseases and insect infestations that killed millions of trees. That followed a century of fire suppression that also built up brush and dead trees, turning some forests into tinderboxes.

City real-estate prices and second-home construction have seen the growth of communities in peripheral, wildland areas that have naturally burned for millennia.

In the world-famous wine country of Napa County, the so-called Glass Fire has damaged over a dozen wineries. Vineyards worked through the night on Saturday to pick grape varieties that can resist smoke damage. Some crops heavily exposed to smoke may be a write-off.

Firefighters were expected to get a break from cooler temperatures in Northern California this week, with a chance of rain, Cal Fire said.

(Reporting by Adrees Latif; Additional reporting and writing by Andrew Hay; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Northern California wildfires kill three, force evacuation of thousands

By Adrees Latif and Stephen Lam

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (Reuters) – A northern California wildfire raging in the foothills of the Cascade range has claimed three lives, officials said on Monday, as a separate blaze prompted mass evacuations and spread turmoil to the famed wine-producing regions of Napa and Sonoma counties.

The three fatalities in the so-called Zogg Fire in Shasta County, which erupted on Sunday near Redding, about 200 miles north of San Francisco, were reported by the county sheriff and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CalFire). They were all civilians.

No further details about the victims or how they perished were immediately provided. But the deaths bring to 29 the number of people killed since mid-August in a California wildfire season of historic proportions.

The Zogg fire, which has destroyed 146 structures and charred 31,000 acres of grassy hillsides and oak woodlands thick with dry scrub, coincided with the outbreak of another conflagration in the heart of California’s wine country north of the Bay area.

That blaze, dubbed the Glass Fire, has spread across 36,000 acres of similar terrain in Napa and Sonoma counties since early Sunday, incinerating more than 100 homes and other buildings, forcing thousands of residents to flee and threatening world-renowned vineyards, according to CalFire.

Both fires were listed at zero containment as of Monday evening. The cause of each was under investigation.

They marked the latest flashpoints in a destructive spate of wildfires this summer across the Western United States.

In California this year, wildfires have scorched 3.7 million acres (1.5 million hectares) since January – far exceeding any single year in state history. They have been stoked by intense, prolonged bouts of heat, high winds and other weather extremes that scientists attribute to climate change.

More than 7,000 homes and other structures have burned statewide so far this year.

LANDMARK CHATEAU BURNS

The Glass Fire broke out in Napa Valley before dawn near Calistoga before merging with two other blazes into a larger eruption of flames straddling western Napa County and an adjacent swath of Sonoma County.

In one notable property loss, the mansion-like Chateau Boswell winery in St. Helena – a familiar landmark along the Silverado Trail road running the length of the Napa Valley – went up in flames on Sunday night.

An estimated 60,000 residents have been placed under evacuation orders or advisories in Sonoma and Napa counties combined, but no injuries have been reported.

Not everyone heeded evacuation orders.

In 2017, roughly 5% of Santa Rosa’s homes were lost when downed power lines sparked a devastating firestorm in October that swept the region, killing 19 people.

HARVEST SEASON SMOKE

The Glass Fire struck about midway through the region’s traditional grape-harvesting season, already disrupted by a spate of large fires earlier this summer.

Several Napa Valley growers said recently they would forgo a 2020 vintage altogether due to smoke contamination of ripening grapes waiting to be picked.

The 475 vintners in Napa Valley alone account for just 4% of the state’s grape harvest but half the retail value of all California wines sold. Sonoma County, too, has become a premiere viticulture region with some 450 wineries and a million acres of vineyards.

The full impact on the region’s wine business remains to be seen and will differ for each grower, depending on how far along they are in the harvest, said Teresa Wall, spokeswoman for the Napa Valley Vintners trade group.

“There are some who were close to wrapping up, and some who were still planning to leave their grapes hanging out there for a while,” she said.

The fires caused major upheavals for the area’s most vulnerable residents already grappling with the coronavirus pandemic.

The Adventist Health St. Helena hospital was forced to evacuate patients on Sunday, the second time in a month following a lightning-sparked wildfire in August.

On Monday, residents at Oakmont Gardens, a Santa Rosa retirement community, leaned on walkers and waited to board a bus taking them to safety, their face masks doubling as protection against smoke and COVID-19.

Over 100,000 homes and business have suffered power outages across northern California since Sunday, some from precautionary shutoffs of transmission lines to reduce wildfire risks in the midst of extremely windy, hot, dry weather, Pacific Gas and Electric Co reported.

Red-flag warnings for extreme wildfire risks remained posted for much of Northern California, forecasting low humidity and gale-force wind gusts.

(Reporting by Adrees Latif and Stephen Lam in Santa Rosa, California; Writing and additional reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Cooney, Gerry Doyle & Shri Navaratnam)