[ornornor]

Never on that scale. This is unprecedented. France asked other EU members for help as the firefighters are overwhelmed and the fire uncontrollable. There hasn’t been an evacuation this large since WW2 (300k people displaced so far, 0.5% of the country’s population)

This isn’t a “it’s summer, and fires burn” type of a deal. Even though most fires are set by idiots on purpose, it spreads so well because everywhere is dry. Most parcs and fields look like savannas instead of the usual green.

[zahlman]

The sources I can readily find place the total extent of forest fires in France this year at 40,000 hectares, still less than https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Landes_forest_fire .

[reco98gg]

And the context is that at the time, they had no way to fight those fires. So yes, it burned 50,000 ha. That was the starting point of devising ways to efficiently fight forest fires. Today we have plenty of specialized trucks, trained firemen, planes, helicopters, who have been fighting for 5 days, and already 42,000 ha are gone. 32,000 ha 4 years ago. After a very wet winter.

Climate is changing drastically, exactly as predicted.

[vasco]

What does the means to fight the fire have to do with the starting cause of a fire?

[darkwater]

Read their post again. They say you cannot compare sizes because nowadays we are much better at extinguishing forest fires that we were 80 years ago.

[vlovich123]

Once in a hundred year (or more) event that was beaten in lethality twice in the past two decades. Hmmmm. Can’t possibly be a pattern there. Not like we have models predicting what happens and that reality is progressing far worse than the scientists are allowed to officially report.

[aakresearch]

0.5% you mean? France population is over 60 million people.

[sdthjbvuiiijbb]

France has more than 6 million people. I think you meant 0.5%

[ornornor]

Yes