{"id":834928,"date":"2026-07-31T04:45:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T04:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/834928\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T04:45:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T04:45:13","slug":"australia-sends-firefighters-to-france-as-europe-enters-new-era-of-megafires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/834928\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia sends firefighters to France as Europe enters new era of megafires"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia is now sending firefighting support to France<\/a>, where hellish wildfires are breaking devastating records.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation we face today is the hardest we\u2019ve ever recorded, the hardest since the Second World War,\u201d French President Emmanuel Macron said.<\/p>\n

The vast megafires ripping through southwestern France are burning so intensely that they have created a powerful, fire-generated thunderstorm.<\/p>\n

Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today Arrow<\/a><\/p>\n

Macron called the fires \u201ctotally unprecedented\u201d for the nation.<\/p>\n

V\u00edctor Resco de Dios, a lecturer of forestry engineering and global change at the University of Lleida in Spain said, \u201cWe have entered an era of fires that cannot be extinguished.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wildfires in France have now scorched more than\u00a01600sqkm, making them the largest on record for France.<\/p>\n

The fires have raged near major cities in both France and Spain, including one which has torn through the mountainous province of Avila, west of the Spanish capital Madrid.<\/p>\n

Australia will send a firefighting chopper, which can fight fires at night, and is equipped with a 11,300L water tank, along with a reconnaissance and support aircraft, and 24 aerial and ground crew from the NSW Rural Fire Service.<\/p>\n

\"WildfiresWildfires in France have now scorched more than 1600sqkm. Credit: Reuters<\/p>\n

\u201cAustralia has some of the finest fire-fighting capability on the planet and we are only too happy to do whatever we can to assist, just as France came to our aid during the 2019-2020 Black Summer Bushfires,\u201d Minister for Emergency Management Kristy McBain said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving seen firsthand the severe impacts bushfires have had on both my own community and many others across Australia, my heart goes out to the people of France.\u201d<\/p>\n

The deployment will take place in the coming days, according the Defence Department.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe scale of these fires is immense, and it is in moments like these that the strength of our partnership and solidarity is most evident,\u201d Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong said.<\/p>\n

Minister for Defence Richard Marles said: \u201cWe are proud to be supporting them now during their time of need.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fire clouds form self-feeding firestorms<\/p>\n

Fire clouds, or \u201cpyrocumulonimbus\u201d, have appeared in the skies above France\u2019s Gironde region, near Bordeaux, according to authorities.<\/p>\n

Fire clouds emerge when particularly intense wildfires generate a plume of extreme heat, which rises rapidly into the cooler air above and condenses into towering thunderstorm clouds.<\/p>\n

These can create their own wind, rain and lightning and transform blazes into erratic and unpredictable self-feeding firestorms.<\/p>\n

This rare phenomenon is sometimes seen during the kinds of megafires that afflict Australia, the US and Canada, but is not at all common in Europe.<\/p>\n

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts said it could not yet say for certain this was France\u2019s first pyrocumulonimbus.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, if confirmed, its development would highlight the exceptional intensity of the current fire and the extraordinary atmospheric conditions under which it is burning,\u201d the centre\u2019s fire forecast coordinator Francesca Di Giuseppe said.<\/p>\n

There are still months of wildfire season left, and it could take that long to extinguish the fires currently burning.<\/p>\n

Climate change ambivalence and \u2018Dantean scenarios\u2019<\/p>\n

Pollution from wildfires is estimated to cause more than 100,000 deaths globally every year.<\/p>\n

The megafires raging near French tourist hotspots, wine-growing regions and vital defence hubs also threaten to cause huge economic damage.<\/p>\n

Scientists say we should expect fires, in Europe as elsewhere, to become more frequent in the future, and more extreme, as long as humans continue to burn fossil fuels and push up temperatures.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to predict how far things might go,\u201d Resco de Dios said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will soon be unable to rule out Dantean scenarios like those seen in California or Australia, with fires or fire complexes reaching hundreds of thousands of hectares or even a million hectares.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LayeredLayered satellite images show a cloud of smoke over southwest France on Monday. Credit: NASA Worldview<\/p>\n

Global warming is bringing stronger swings between wet and dry extremes, which Matthew Jones, an independent research fellow at the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia in England described as a \u201cwhiplash effect\u201d.<\/p>\n

Last winter was unusually wet in France and Spain, leading a surge in vegetation growth. Then the weather flipped.<\/p>\n

Since May, Western Europe has been roiled by a succession of brutal heat waves, which parched the landscape.<\/p>\n

This heat provided \u201cthe \u2018crack of the whip\u2019 in the whiplash effect, turning that dense vegetation into highly combustible fuel\u201d, Jones said.<\/p>\n

A rare multinational wildfire crisis<\/p>\n

Wildfires have scorched not only France and Spain, but also Turkey and Greece.<\/p>\n

Both France and Spain have requested EU assistance, and Stefan Doerr, director of the Centre for Wildfire Research at Swansea University in Wales said: \u201cA synchronised, multinational wildfire crisis is rare in Europe\u201d.<\/p>\n

More than 300,000 people have been evacuated across the two countries so far, though some were able to begin returning to their homes on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is uncommon is the current number of destructive wildfires: fires that spread rapidly, overwhelm fire brigades and force communities to evacuate,\u201d Imperial College London professor of fire science Guillermo Rein said.<\/p>\n

Wildfires in Turkey have also begun to pick up, with fires spreading in agricultural and forested areas of the southwestern Mugla province on the Aegean coast.<\/p>\n

In neighbouring Greece, at least three firefighters have been killed. Two died battling flames on Crete and a third while tackling a blaze in Gythio, the state-run Athens-Macedonian News Agency (AMNA) reported, citing the Greek Fire Service officials.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Book 150 years overdue returned to Kiama library<\/p>\n

2 min read<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Iconic Aussie music journalist dies age 74<\/p>\n

1 min read<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia is now sending firefighting support to France, where hellish wildfires are breaking devastating records. \u201cThe situation we…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":834929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,68,3403,75,45622,2491,2592,44,84,128,1192],"class_list":["post-834928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-climate-change","tag-defence","tag-environment","tag-fires","tag-foreign-aid","tag-france","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-science","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}