[ad_1]
The first half of July was a tense period for the Emergency Response Coordination Center (ERCC) in Brussels, after this year’s wildfire season in Europe.
In just 8 days, four member states – France, Italy, Slovenia and Spain – requested stranded assistance in their battle with the devastating fires, bringing to five the number of activations of the emergency center for forest fires this year.
The agency is part of the EU’s Civil Protection Mechanism, which has also had a heavy workload due to Russia’s war in Ukraine and the pandemic.
But unlike war or COVID-19, apocalyptic forest fires in Europe are now becoming a regular summer occurrence as climate change pushes temperatures to record breaking new highs, with nearly half of the European bloc now exposed. to dangerous levels of droughts.
“Since 2017, there has been a drastic increase in relation to the activation of the mechanism for forest fires and not only for Europe, but also for North Africa. We also had requests from Georgia,” ERCC chief Antoine Lemasson told Euronews.
The ERCC was established in 2013 to be the “operational heart” of the EU Civil Protection Mechanism and now counts 33 participating countries including the 27 EU member states as well as Norway, Iceland, Montenegro, Macedonia and North, Serbia and Turkey.
top channel
[ad_2]
Source link
