100-Year-Old WWI Bombs Are Being Set Off By Wildfires In Europe
Wildfires engulfing Slovenia are setting off bombs buried in the ground since the first World War.
According to Slovenia press, the blaze has been moving across Kras in western Slovenia through areas that were once battlefields during WW1. As a result, they're coming into contact with detonation devices that didn't go off during the century-old conflict.
Although apparently the blaze in the area has now been brought under control, the fire sweeping across the region came into contact with a bomb on 22 July, detonating the device while firefighters worked nearby.
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Shrapnel was discarded across a wide radius, but thankfully no one was hurt.
Shockingly, this isn't an isolated incident, with so many similar bombs exploding due to the fires that officials have apparently stopped counting detonations - instead they only mark those that explode near roads.
The issue of unexploded ordnances from World War I and II is one that spreads across the entirety of Europe. In Slovenia, it's an added worry with more than 1,000 firefighters and parts of the Slovenian military already having to contend with a blaze that at one point had spread to almost 5,000 acres of land.
“The problem is that because of the unexploded ordnance firefighting units cannot penetrate into the fire but can only act on its edges. This is why the fire is being intensively fought from the air as well,” Slovenian defense minister Marjan Šarec told the press.
At the site of the fire, there were 12 battles during World War I with more than 200,00 fatalities amid an untold amount of explosives being used.
To put into perspective how many undetonated bombs there may be across Europe still, the Royal Air Force and US Army Air Force dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs on Europe during World War II alone - and there's no doubt that a large number of those won't have gone off.
Attempts to decommission them are risky. In France alone, 630 bomb disposal officers have died doing the job since the end of the second World War.
It’s estimated that clearing Europe of such munitions will take another 100 years. However, with temperatures increasing and the likelihood of wildfires becoming an ever more increasing occurrence, there's the grim chance that nature will carry on doing the job for them.
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Topics: Environment, World War 2, Climate Change, Weather
Simon Catling