{"id":142198,"date":"2025-09-08T18:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T18:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/142198\/"},"modified":"2025-09-08T18:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T18:18:09","slug":"wildfires-in-2025-ravaged-an-area-nearly-half-the-size-of-sicily-these-eu-countries-bore-the-brunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/142198\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildfires in 2025 ravaged an area nearly half the size of Sicily: These EU countries bore the brunt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>          <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-ad__placeholder__logo\" src=\"https:\/\/static.euronews.com\/website\/images\/logos\/logo-euronews-stacked-outlined-72x72-grey-9.svg\" width=\"72\" height=\"72\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><br \/>\n          ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>This year, wildfires across the EU have burned an area nearly half the size of Sicily, according to the latest data from Copernicus&#8217; <a href=\"https:\/\/joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu\/projects-and-activities\/natural-and-man-made-hazards\/fires\/current-wildfire-situation-europe_en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\">European Forest Fires Information System<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So far in 2025, about 986,000 hectares have gone up in flames, more than three times the 227,627 hectares recorded in the previous year, with nearly 2,000 blazes detected.<\/p>\n<p>Since late February, the average monthly number of fires has been the highest on record.<\/p>\n<p>Spain suffered the worst damage, with over 380,000 hectares burnt, roughly 1.5 times the size of the state of Luxembourg.<\/p>\n<p>Portugal suffered even worse damage relative to its size, with around 263,000 hectares destroyed, about eight times the size of Malta.<\/p>\n<p>The emergency prompted cross-country aid, with Maltese firefighters joining efforts in Portugal and Greece.<\/p>\n<p>One of the latest interventions was reported on Sunday, in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/CivilProtectionMalta\/posts\/firefighters-from-civil-protection-malta-currently-stationed-in-portugal-have-on\/1248377880657787\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\">Corgas<\/a> in central Portugal.<\/p>\n<p>Which EU countries invest the most in fire protection?<\/p>\n<p>Across the EU, there are almost 400,000\u00a0firefighters on duty, Eurostat <a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/eurostat\/web\/products-eurostat-news\/w\/ddn-20250826-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\">reports<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Germany has the largest force (66,000), followed by France (52,000), Poland (49,000)\u00a0 and Italy (43,500).<\/p>\n<p>However, the highest number of firefighters compared to the size of the job market is on the job in Croatia (0.45%), with Greece following second (0.41%).<\/p>\n<p>The Netherlands comes in at the bottom with 0.08%.<\/p>\n<p>Romania has biggest fire protection budget in EU<\/p>\n<p>In terms of money, however, it&#8217;s Romania that leads the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Its government allocates nearly 1% of its budget to wildfire protection, followed by Estonia and Greece with 0.7%.<\/p>\n<p>The countries with the lowest budget are Denmark (0.1%), Malta (0.2%), Portugal and Austria (both 0.3%).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The average across the EU is 0.5%, on a total of \u20ac40 billion spent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ADVERTISEMENT This year, wildfires across the EU have burned an area nearly half the size of Sicily, according&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,88653,31936,88652,79,6399],"class_list":{"0":"post-142198","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-fires-in-spain","10":"tag-forest-fires","11":"tag-portugal-wildfires","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-wildfires"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}