Wildfires and other fire incidents

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weatheriscool
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3 missing as huge California fire rages. Some armed residents tell authorities they won't evacuate.
Source: Yahoo-Axios

By Rebecca Falconer
Authorities were searching for three missing people as the Dixie Fire, the biggest wildfire now burning in the U.S., tore through Northern California communities, authorities said Saturday night.

Details: Evacuation orders were in effect for several Sierra Nevada mountain communities, as the third-largest blaze in California's history continued to threaten homes.

Plumas County Sheriff Todd Johns told a community meeting Saturday night that two people from Greenville were missing and a woman from nearby Chester had been reported safe, but no official contact had been made with authorities.

The Dixie Fire was also raging across Butte, Lassen, and Tehama counties.


Read more: https://news.yahoo.com/5-people-missing ... 17264.html
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Deadly fires devour Algeria's northern forests, leave 7 dead
Source: AP

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Firefighters and residents armed with simple tools battled a rash of forest fires in northern Algeria on Tuesday that officials said killed at least seven people. The nation’s interior minister blamed “criminal hands” for some of the blazes.

Multiple fires were burning through forests and devouring the olive trees, cattle and chickens that provide the livelihoods of families in the mountainous Kabyle region. Interior Minister Kamel Beldjoud traveled to Kabyle, home of the Berbers, to assess the situation.

“Thirty fires at the same time in the same region can’t be by chance,” Beldjoud said on national television, although no arrests were announced.

Other northern areas of Algeria also had active wildfires. The Civil Protection authority said on Algerian radio that seven people had died, six in Kabyle and a man in his 80s trying to save his animals in the Setif region to the east. It counted 41 blazes in 18 wilayas, or regions, as of Monday night, with 21 of them burning around the Kabyle capital of Tizi Ouzou.




Read more: https://apnews.com/article/africa-fires ... ddf9279b7d
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Rains Bring Respite to Turkey's Fire-ravaged Forests
August 9, 2021

https://www.thenationalnews.com/mena/20 ... d-forests/

Introduction:
(The National) Heavy rainfall has helped firefighting efforts in Turkey's Mediterranean and Aegean provinces, after wildfires ravaged tens of thousands of hectares for almost two weeks.

Of the 240 fires that broke out since July 28, 238 have been put brought under control, state news agency Anadolu said on Monday.

Eight people were killed and thousands, including tourists, were forced to flee.

Although parts of neighbouring Greece continue to burn, rainfall brought some respite from the blazes in Turkey.

People rejoiced as the rain fell, kneeling down in prayer in the town of Manavgat, local Turkish media reported.
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caltrek
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Why We Need to Worry About the Wildfires Raging in Greece
by Mehr Gill
August 10, 2021

https://indianexpress.com/article/expla ... g-7447817/

Introduction:
(The India Express) Thousands of people have fled parts of Greece due to raging uncontrolled wildfires. Wildfires, or bushfires in Australia, are unplanned fires that burn through natural areas such as forests, grasslands or prairies.

While wildfires are common in some parts of the world during the summer season, concern is rising about recent such blazes that have wreaked havoc in western US and now the Mediterranean. The worry is exacerbated especially because these wildfires seem to be coming closer to civilisation, damaging buildings and forcing mass evacuations.

Wildfire basics

Around the world, wildfires or forest fires occur during hot and dry seasons. Since dry leaves, shrubs, grass and deadwood are easily combustible, they are easy to ignite. Ignition can either happen naturally, such as through lightning strikes, or triggered accidentally, such as from cigarette stubs.
Sometimes, however, ignition can be intentional, such as to clear land or to control an incoming forest fire by removing vegetation that would provide more fuel to it. Such fires typically come to an end when there is no more vegetation to burn or because of rain.

As the fires burn through vegetation or forests, smoke and carbon are released into the atmosphere. But the fires also release nutrients into the soil and are an important part of ecological succession, plant germination, and soil enhancement, NASA notes. The size of a wildfire depends on the amount of vegetation available and also the strength and direction of the wind.
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Huge California fire grows; Montana blaze threatens towns
Source: AP
GREENVILLE, Calif. (AP) — California’s largest single wildfire in recorded history continued to grow Wednesday after destroying more than 1,000 buildings, nearly half of them homes, while authorities in Montana ordered evacuations as a wind-driven blaze roared toward several remote communities.

The dangerous fires were among some 100 large blazes burning across 15 states, mostly in the West, where historic drought conditions have left lands parched and ripe for ignition.

The east end of Northern California’s massive Dixie Fire flared up on Tuesday as afternoon winds increased, fire officials said.

Burning through bone-dry trees, brush and grass, the fire has destroyed at least 1,045 buildings, including 550 homes, in the northern Sierra Nevada. Newly released satellite imagery showed the scale of the destruction in the small community of Greenville that was incinerated last week during an explosive run of flames.


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/business-sci ... 97546c602d
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Wildfire bears down on Montana towns as West burns
Source: AP

By MATTHEW BROWN and CHRISTOPHER WEBER
LAME DEER, Mont. (AP) — A wildfire bore down on rural southeastern Montana towns Thursday as continuing hot, dry weather throughout the West drove flames through more than a dozen states.

Several thousand people in Montana remained under evacuation orders as the Richard Spring Fire advanced across the sparsely-populated Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.

Meanwhile, California’s Dixie Fire — which started July 13 and is the largest wildfire burning in the nation — threatened a dozen small communities in the northern Sierra Nevada even though its southern end was mostly corralled by fire lines.

The fire has burned 790 square miles (2,000 square kilometers), destroyed some 550 homes and nearly obliterated the town of Greenville last week. It was 30% contained.


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/fires-enviro ... ed0e4bb7a5
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Siberian wildfires dwarf all others on Earth combined
Smoke from massive wildfires in Russia's Siberia region has reached the geographic North Pole "for the first time in recorded history," according to NASA — while the forest blazes themselves are bigger than all the other wildfires currently burning in the world combined, one expert said.

The U.S space agency published a photograph Saturday (Aug. 7) from one of its satellites that shows the acrid blanket of smoke stretching more than 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers), from the Yakutia region in the northeast of Siberia up to the North Pole. According to their records, this may be the first time this has ever happened.

Wildfires occur every summer in the heavily forested region — a landscape known as the taiga — but this year has been especially bad.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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Forest Service maxed out as wildfires break across US West
Source: AP

By EUGENE GARCIA and DAISY NGUYEN
WESTWOOD, Calif. (AP) — The U.S. Forest Service said Friday it’s operating in crisis mode, fully deploying firefighters and maxing out its support system as wildfires continue to break out across the U.S. West, threatening thousands of homes and entire towns.

The roughly 21,000 federal firefighters working on the ground is more than double the number of firefighters sent to contain forest fires at this time a year ago, and the agency is facing “critical resources limitations,” said Anthony Scardina, a deputy forester for the agency’s Pacific Southwest region.

An estimated 6,170 firefighters alone are battling the Dixie Fire in Northern California, the largest of 100 large fires burning in 14 states, with dozens more burning in western Canada.

The fire began a month ago and has destroyed more than 1,000 homes, businesses and other structures, much of it in the small town of Greenville in the northern Sierra Nevada.


Read more: https://apnews.com/article/fires-enviro ... 5cd2b6dc04
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Greece wildfires: Winds fan 2 new blazes outside of Athens
Source: AP

By ELENA BECATOROS
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Fanned by strong winds, two new big wildfires erupted Monday in hard-hit Greece, triggering evacuation alerts for villages southeast and northwest of Athens — only days after blazes consumed large tracts of forest north of the Greek capital.

No injuries have been reported but Greek media said a few buildings had been damaged.

Greece has been roiled by hundreds of wildfires this month, on the heels of its most severe heat wave in decades, which left its forests tinder dry. Other Mediterranean countries — Turkey, Italy, Algeria and Spain among them — have suffered similar problems.

Scientists say there is little doubt that climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is driving more extreme weather events.



Read more: https://apnews.com/article/europe-middl ... 8fed802348
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Thousands evacuated in southern France as wildfire spreads

17 Aug 2021

Thousands of people in southern France have been evacuated as a wildfire rages near the plush resort of Saint-Tropez, the fire service has said.

About 750 firefighters and water-dropping aircraft battled the blaze in difficult conditions with high temperatures and strong winds.

“Thousands of people have been evacuated as a precautionary measure, but there are no victims,” a fire service spokeswoman said on Tuesday adding the fire was “still very fierce”.

France is the latest of a number of Mediterranean countries to be hit by extreme weather and wildfires, which climate scientists warn will become increasingly common because of man-made global warming.

The quickly spreading fire, which broke out Monday about 100km (60 miles) from the Mediterranean city Toulon, has already razed more than 3,500 hectares (8,600 acres) of forest and scrub land as of Tuesday morning, according to the fire department.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/8/1 ... re-spreads


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Credit: AFP
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