As flames devour thousands of hectares in France and Spain and over 300,000 people have been evacuated, the World Health Organization warns that smoke travels across the continent endangering millions of lives. Meanwhile, the European Union lacks a unified picture of deliberate arson.
The wildfire season in Europe is becoming increasingly devastating. A fire that broke out west of the French city of Bordeaux on July 22 had consumed nearly 45,000 hectares by July 28, almost three times the multi-year national average of 15,000 hectares, reports Hindustan Times. Simultaneously, about 500 kilometers to the south, the firestorm dangerously approached Madrid, forcing authorities to order mass evacuations. According to the same source, more than 300,000 residents have been displaced from affected areas so far.
Last year already broke grim records: more than one million hectares burned in the European Union, an area the size of Cyprus, the highest loss on record, according to Euronews. The continent is warming faster than any other, and it faces decades of increasingly dangerous fire conditions.
While firefighters battle the flames, the World Health Organization (WHO) warns of a different, far-reaching danger, smoke that travels hundreds and thousands of kilometers. "These are not just fire episodes affecting livelihoods and creating immediate danger; it is a genuine health crisis," Dorota Jarosinska, program manager at the WHO European Centre for Climate Change, Environment and Health, told Euronews.
Jarosinska emphasized that smoke from wildfires can compromise air quality even in densely populated urban areas far from the fire site. "You don't need to see flames or a column of smoke to feel the health risk," she added. Fine particles from smoke, she explains, penetrate from the lungs into the bloodstream and trigger inflammatory processes in the body, with consequences ranging from mild irritation to life-threatening conditions, especially for asthmatics, heart patients, children, and the elderly.
The WHO official also warned of a gap in public health communication. Although staying indoors and using air conditioning with high-efficiency filters is recommended, many vulnerable citizens do not have access to such equipment. "Authorities must also take care of those who are disadvantaged, who lack access to healthcare, who do not speak the local language, who have no access to information," Jarosinska said. The priority, she adds, is to strengthen the health sector through training and equipping staff so that health considerations are more strongly integrated into local actions.
While the EU, through its Civil Protection Mechanism and the rescEU reserve, is increasingly coordinating firefighting efforts, a blind spot remains when it comes to detecting causes. "Not all these fires are accidents. Some are deliberately set: that is a crime, punishable by 15 years in prison," French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu wrote on platform X during the current crisis, adding that security forces are fully mobilized to identify the arsonists. Under French law, the maximum fine is 150,000 euros.
However, as Euronews points out, there is no harmonized definition of arson at the EU level, and criminal legislation remains a national competence. While Spain has banned the change of use of burned forest land for 30 years, Portugal limits that ban to ten years. The European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) has identified multiple motives for deliberate fires, from pasture renewal and vandalism to land management conflicts. Despite this, Europe can track every fire from space via the Copernicus and EFFIS systems, but it lacks a comparable intelligence picture of who sets the fires and why.
Data from Hindustan Times reveals worrying long-term projections. With a 0.5°C increase in average temperature compared to the first decades of this century, fire risk is forecast for 88% of the planet's fire-prone areas. It is estimated that during the 2010s, wildfire smoke caused 240,000 deaths annually, and under a moderate emissions scenario, that number could reach 1.4 million per year by the end of the century. In the United States, up to 30,000 excess deaths per year from the same cause are expected by 2050. A reminder of the scale of the threat also comes from Indonesia, where smoke from fires killed an estimated 100,000 people in 2015, and a similar danger is recurring this year.
Although Croatia is not directly affected by the current fires, experts warn that climate change increases the risk for the entire Mediterranean, including our coastal region. Smoke that travels thousands of kilometers across Europe knows no borders, and health systems must be prepared for consequences far from the flames themselves.
