Wildfires expose — and detonate — buried bombs and mines from WWI and WWII

ELSENBORN, Belgium (AP) – The wildfires burning throughout Europe this summer have exposed a potentially deadly threat lurking beneath the blackened landscape: rusty bombs and mines from World War I and II that threaten crews responding to the flames.

Key points

• "Climate change is now doing the work of unburying and reactivating what was previously stable, " Njeri remarked.
• Steady temperatures and predictable rainfall once ensured that most buried weapons stayed dormant.
• Some of the weapons have exploded in the intense heat.

What happened

Some of the weapons have exploded in the intense heat. Blasts have been documented in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, where a bomb-disposal team was dispatched to check a forest threatened by flames near a site of fierce fighting in the Limburg province in 1944.

Fueled by climate change, the fires and explosions show that the continent's "climatic luck" is running out, remarked Sarah Njeri, a peace and conflict scholar at London's School of Oriental and African Studies. Steady temperatures and predictable rainfall once ensured that most buried weapons stayed dormant.

"Climate change is now doing the work of unburying and reactivating what was previously stable, " Njeri remarked. Fires can ignite old munitions but can additionally burn away the scrub and brush that hides them.

The bottom line

In short, wildfires expose – and detonate – buried bombs and mines from WWI is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.