A large wildfire was underway Thursday morning in Berlin following an explosion at a police ammunition depot, firefighters said. They said they had trouble controlling the situation.
“A fire is in progress in the forest of Grunewald”, west of the city, and “there are explosions”, underlined the firefighters.
“The fire spread over an area of 15,000 square meters, first at a police ammunition and explosives defusing and defusing site, then in the surrounding forest,” they added. “The situation is confused, the fire continues to spread uncontrolled in the forest,” a spokesman told AFP.
The fire brigade could not immediately intervene due to the danger of an explosion. They positioned themselves in a perimeter established one kilometer from the ammunition depot, where several explosions continued to sound.
‘Extreme drought’
The Berlin region is the victim of a particularly pronounced drought. A vast forest fire has already ravaged in July more than 850 hectares in the south of Brandenburg, the region surrounding the capital.
A little further south, a fire in the ‘Bohemian Switzerland’ national park, which started in the Czech Republic before spreading to Germany, is still mobilizing firefighters.
A new heat wave is currently affecting Germany, like the rest of Europe. Much of the country is in a state of ‘extreme’ or ‘exceptional’ drought, including Berlin, according to the UFZ institute for environmental research.
According to scientists, repeated heat waves are an unequivocal marker of global warming and these heat waves are expected to multiply, lengthen and intensify.
The rise in temperatures and the multiplication of heat waves and droughts create ideal conditions for forest fires or bush fires.
/ATS