The wildfires raging across Europe this summer have not only taken a toll of human lives but also exposed hidden danger lurking beneath the charred landscape: buried bombs and mines from the two world wars.
The more worrisome thing is that these wildfires threaten to explode these rusty yet deadly mines and bombs, thereby worsening the conditions for the countries. According to some crew members battling with these widely-spreading fires, some of the weapons have exploded in the intense heat.
Recently, blasts have been heard in Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. In the wake of such blasts, a bomb-disposal squad was deployed to sweep a forest threatened by wildfires near a fierce battleground in the Limburg province in 1944.
Belgium’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Destruction Service responds to over 3,000 calls annually, disposing of 200 to 250 tons of leftover munitions from both world wars.
According to Sarah Njeri, a peace and conflict scholar at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, the weapons buried deep in the ground have started to come to the surface driven by climate change predicament, thereby opening another front of danger for European countries.
“Climate change is now doing the work of unburying and reactivating what was previously stable,” Njeri said. Besides, igniting these old ammunitions, fires can burn away the brush that hides them.
Dense forests like High Fens, which is the site of the Battle of Bulge, still contain hidden landmines, unexploded bombs and booby traps, posing risks of occasional detonations during the wildfires.
Extreme weather patterns including the surging temperatures and droughts is further fueling wildfires, thereby exposing the lethal legacies of historical conflicts related to WWI and WWII.
Christina Greene, a researcher at the University of Arizona, said, “Climate change is reliving the legacies of war and conflict in a way that we haven’t had to deal with in a while in certain places.”
