Wildfires across Europe are exposing a dangerous legacy of the two world wars, with intense heat triggering explosions from unexploded bombs and mines buried beneath forests, farmland and waterways.
Emergency crews in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands have had to account for wartime munitions as they tackled fires. In the Netherlands, a bomb-disposal team was sent to inspect a forest in Limburg threatened by flames near a site of heavy fighting in 1944.
Sarah Njeri, a peace and conflict scholar at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, said climate change was “unburying and reactivating what was previously stable”. She said the fires and the wartime bombs detonated by them showed that Europe’s “climatic luck” was running out.
This year’s wildfire conditions were intensified by heavy rain in January, which encouraged vegetation growth. That vegetation later became fuel during summer heat, while drought, low humidity and strong winds created conditions favourable to rapid fire spread, according to a study published last month by the World Weather Attribution group.
Wildfires and unexploded bombs in former battlefields
As flames moved across areas known to contain unexploded weapons, emergency services faced risks that can remain hidden for decades after fighting ends. A large wildfire outside Bordeaux in south-western France uncovered what is believed to be a cache of Second World War ammunition.
In Belgium’s eastern province of Liege, governor Hervé Jamar reported “a few sporadic detonations”. Fire crews adapted their response to take account of munitions buried in the affected area. Jamar said firefighters were not in danger, although local media published photographs of a firefighter handling a rusted bomb.
The High Fens, a dense peat-bog forest stretching across Belgium’s border with Germany, contains numerous wartime hazards. Booby traps, bombs and mines were placed there during the Second World War, and the area was part of the Battle of the Bulge, when Nazi and Allied forces fought in and around the region.
The fire was also close to former fighting around Elsenborn Ridge and the Hurtgen Forest. The latter battle lasted 88 days and resulted in the deaths of about 33,000 American troops and 28,000 German troops.
Bernard Collard, a local historian who runs the Truschbaum Museum near the Belgian-German border, said his father had once detonated a bomb found in a quarry. He said six civilians were killed by munitions in the first four years after Germany surrendered in 1945.
Collard has permission to use a metal detector on former battlefields, which are now forests, farmland and pasture. He has found mortar shells, machine guns, helmets and cigarette cases, as well as a human skeleton. Old foxholes, trenches and artillery craters are now covered by blueberry bushes.
“You never know what you might come across, and you shouldn’t take it lightly,” Collard said.
Heat and drought reveal further weapons
Jonas Tepe, a spokesperson for North Rhine-Westphalia, said unexploded ordnance was particularly dangerous during wildfires because heat could trigger explosives. Belgium’s Ministry of Defence receives weekly requests from the region to help disarm munitions, although it does not classify the area as a national “hot spot”.
In western Belgium, farmers describe the annual discovery of wartime remnants during ploughing as the “iron harvest”. The country’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Destruction Service responds to more than 3,000 calls each year and disposes of between 200 and 250 tons of munitions left from both world wars.
Drought has also exposed weapons by reducing water levels. In Slovakia, the falling Danube revealed two naval mines, which police removed before burying them in a trench for controlled demolition. In Hungary, authorities closed Budapest’s Margaret Bridge after a Second World War bomb emerged at its base as water receded. German authorities found another wartime bomb as the Rhine dried up.
Christina Greene, a University of Arizona researcher who co-wrote an article with Njeri about the risk posed by European wildfires and unexploded ordnance, said the “legacy of war keeps creeping up” as a result of climate change. She said the changing conditions were bringing past conflict back into public view in places that had not faced the issue so directly for some time.
Source: Metro News
