Europe's wildfires expose the South's fragile interior

Wildfires are spreading across Europe, forcing evacuations and causing deaths and major damage in a summer that has tested the continent's firefighting capacity, France 24 reported. Greece, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Germany and the UK have all battled severe fires, with Croatia also seeing multiple blazes and arrests over suspected arson. The scale of the destruction has prompted questions about whether Europe is facing a new normal of fire seasons.

In an interview with France 24, Alexander Held, Senior Expert at the European Forest Institute, explained why fires are spreading into unexpected areas, including regions not traditionally considered high-risk. He noted that a combination of prolonged drought, heatwaves and land abandonment has created conditions for fires to ignite and spread rapidly, even in places like Belgium and Germany that were once considered safe from such disasters.

For the Italian South, the story is deeply familiar. The interior regions, including Molise, have seen decades of depopulation, leaving villages surrounded by unmanaged scrubland and abandoned farmland that becomes tinder in dry summers. The foreign press's coverage of fires in "unexpected" areas resonates here, where the line between rural life and wildfire risk has always been thin.