Wildfires Across Europe Expose and Detonate Buried World War Relics

ELSENBORN, Belgium — The wildfires burning across Europe this summer have exposed a potentially deadly threat beneath the blackened landscape: rusty bombs and mines from World War I and II that threaten crews responding to the flames. Some of the weapons have exploded in the intense heat, with blasts reported in France, Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, 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, said 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 said. Fires can ignite old munitions but can also burn away the scrub and brush that hides them.

This wildfire season was supercharged by heavy rains in January that spurred vegetation growth, which became kindling when the summer heat arrived. Those temperatures, combined with drought conditions, low humidity, and stiff winds, offered an ideal environment for fire, according to a study issued last month by the World Weather Attribution group.

Flames Chew Up Old Battlefields and Set Off Buried Explosives

As they advanced, the flames moved over territory that has long been known to hold unexploded weapons, a lethal legacy that lingered long after the guns fell silent. In a forest in tinder-dry France, a massive wildfire outside the southwestern city of Bordeaux uncovered a cache of what is believed to be World War II-era ammunition.

In the eastern Belgian province of Liege, Gov. Hervé Jamar said 'a few sporadic detonations' were recently heard and that emergency services were adapting to account for munitions buried in a fire area. He said no fire crews were in danger, but local media published photos of a firefighter holding a shell.

During World War II, booby traps, bombs, and mines were sprinkled throughout the High Fens forest in Belgium, where the Battle of the Bulge was fought in and around the area. The fire in the High Fens is smoldering atop a much-bloodied battlefield where Nazis fought Allied troops, close to the sites of skirmishes along Elsenborn Ridge and in the Hurtgen Forest. The battle for the Hurtgen Forest lasted 88 days and killed about 33,000 American and 28,000 German troops.

In the first four years after Germany's surrender in 1945, munitions in the High Fens killed six civilians, said Bernard Collard, a local historian who runs the Truschbaum Museum. Collard is authorized to scan with a metal detector the former battlefields, now forests, pastures, and farmland. Over the years, he has found mortar shells, machine guns, helmets, cigarette cases, and once a human skeleton. He frequently works with the Belgian demining squad.

Emergency Services Adapt to the Hidden Danger

The threat is not limited to Belgium. Jonas Tepe, a spokesperson for North Rhine-Westphalia, said that unexploded ordnance is even more dangerous around wildfires because heat can trigger the explosives. Belgium's Ministry of Defense said it receives requests about every week to assist in disarming explosives from the region, yet does not consider the area a 'hot spot' compared to elsewhere in Belgium.

Farmers in towns such as Ypres call the annual tilling of the soil 'the iron harvest' because it turns up so many war remnants. Every year across Belgium, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Destruction Service responds to more than 3,000 calls and disposes of 200 to 250 tons of munitions.

The problem extends beyond Belgium and France. In Slovakia, the Danube River fell and exposed two naval mines that police pulled out and buried in a trench for a controlled demolition. Authorities in Hungary closed Budapest's Margaret Bridge after a World War II-era bomb emerged at its base in receding water. As the Rhine dried up, German authorities found a World War II-era bomb.

Christina Greene, a researcher at the University of Arizona, said, 'It's reliving the legacies of war and conflict in a way that we haven't had to deal with in a while in certain places.'