The alarming information was provided by the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis) of the European Commission: since January, more than 600 thousand hectares of land have been consumed by fire, which is an area that is larger than the entire region of Liguria. There have been 319 fires in Italy, which have so far caused the destruction of 37,000 hectares.
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| [Europe wildfire 2022] |
In the European Union, wildfires have been responsible for the loss of over 600,000 hectares of land since the beginning of the year 2022. These fires have occurred across the whole continent, from north to south and east to west. 542 thousand hectares, a space that is larger than the region of Liguria as a whole. A record that is anything but cheerful, a figure that has quadrupled in comparison to the average of the previous 16 years, "stopped" at 158 thousand hectares when it reached that number.
A plague, that of fires, as quantified in the numbers provided by the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis) of the European Commission, which also confirm the record of major fires: from January to the present, there have been 2,144 in the European Union, compared to an average of 493 recorded between the years 2006 and 2021. The most recent events have made it clear that Italy is in the midst of a serious crisis: in 2022, 37 thousand hectares were consumed by fire, which is significantly higher than the average of 34 thousand hectares burned each year, and there were 319 large fires (average 143).
Worrisome data, especially when compared with the monitoring done in 2021, which found that, also between the 1st of January and the 16th of July, 346 thousand hectares had been consumed by fire. This is an area that is roughly the same size as the Aosta Valley, but it is significantly less than what was registered this year. Also according to the study referring to the previous year, Romania was one of the EU nations that was most hit, with a total of 735 large fires and 149 thousand hectares of land being lost since the beginning of the year.
Once more, this was the highest reported total throughout the course of the previous 16 years. Figures for the other Eastern European nations were also at record highs: Croatia had suffered a loss of 28,000 hectares burned in 134 fires, Bulgaria had lost 7,735 hectares burned in 50 fires, Hungary had lost 5,877 hectares burned in 44 fires, and Slovakia had lost 275 hectares.