Expert on forest fire that continues underground: “A week later, the fire can be 100 meters away without you noticing it” | News

“Everything under control again”. That’s what they thought in the Gironde when the last week of July started. Two gigantic wildfires had destroyed 14,000 hectares of forest. Three weeks later, tens of thousands of people are displaced there. It now appears that the fire had crept into the ground and continued to smolder all the while to resurface elsewhere. What do we know about this phenomenon? Why is an underground fire so difficult to detect and fight? Can this happen everywhere and therefore also here? We spoke to the experts on wildfires from the fire brigade and Natuur en Bos. “Just about every resurgence in nature involves a ground fire.”