Today’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung provides an interim account of extreme weather events since the beginning of the year with maps and graphics. “Summer isn’t over yet, and yet weather service records are higher than ever,” notes the columnist. “In large parts of Europe the heatwave is ringing again, in some areas it is already the third or fourth wave in recent months. A first half of the year for the history books. And the trend continues. Europe is warming faster than ever another region, a development that has intensified since the 1980s. Global warming, i.e. climate change, raises the heat, accelerates the so-called hydrological water cycle, causes extreme weather conditions with increasingly frequent catastrophic consequences: severe fires as in Greece, Tenerife, Cyprus, southern France and Portugal. Or cataclysmic floods, such as those in Italy and Slovenia.”

The fires, how to deal with them, and the incredibly quick return of tourists to Rhodes after the devastating fires are issues that concern the Süddeutsche Zeitung columnists as well. In the insert of the newspaper the impressions of its columnist who went to the island and saw with her own eyes the return of the tourists.

“The smell of smoke is gone, the tourists are here”

“Among the oddities of this disaster is that the smell of the fire seems to have disappeared as quickly as the return of visitors,” he notes. “The hotel (s.s mentions name) again had 900 people from last week, which is 90% occupancy. In the buffet there are happy children with spaghetti on their plates. In the pool red skins from the sun. In the group “Vacation in Rhodes, Facebook images of the fire and a fundraising campaign for a donkey owner have long since been replaced by pictures of picturesque beaches.Greece Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was quick to offer tourists, who had to be taken to safety, the prospect a week’s free vacation in the low demand period. So vacation as usual?” asks the rhetorical question of the German columnist

“It seems so, but only if you don’t take a deeper look,” she replies. “For the locals, many of whom have returned from the fires in receptions, normalcy has not returned. Many are worried about next winter, when it will rain and the forest that normally holds the water will be missing.” To these locals, Dimitris Hadjifotis whose tavern burned down or Elpida who almost had her animals burned, she gives a platform to describe their own experiences, the other side. “This is also Rhodes after the fires.”

Cool burning, like the Aborigines

In today’s issue, SZ Munich hosts forester Alexander Held, who explains why so many forests are burning, what is human responsibility and what needs to change. In his view when a forest burns behind it is 99% man, with or without his will. By dropping his cigarette, eg or starting a fire due to mental illness. And he suggests not so much fighting the fire, but the so-called cool burning. And he explains what he means.

“We know from fire research that removing dead matter is an effective strategy,” he says. “For thousands of years Aboriginal people have been shaping savannah landscapes with gentle fires. Otherwise, so much biomass would accumulate there that huge amounts of carbon would be created during decomposition. A bolt of lightning would then be enough to set the whole place on fire. We should take advantage of this knowledge, but adapted to our ecosystems”. But how is this done in practice? “The fire service puts controlled fires in strategic places outside the fire season, when it is still cool and wet. This removes the leaves and roots that are fuel. This creates conditions for a healthy soil and resilient vegetation. Combined with grazing and proper cultivation, a potential fire will be able to be brought under control.” The forester suggests a shift from investment in tourism to traditional agriculture. “In the past, fires quickly reached their limits because the Mediterranean landscape was diverse. Today it is overgrown with scrub forests, maquis and pines, a highly flammable mixture that causes huge fires.”