Tag: wildfires

‘Reckless’ 18,000 reduction in firefighters during worst year for wildfires

New EU data revealing a huge reduction in the number of firefighters during the worst year on record for wildfires highlights the need to end reckless cuts to our public services. 
 
Figures published today by Eurostat show that Europe had 372,400 professional firefighters in 2025 – down from 390,600 firefighters in 2024. See notes for national figures.

The reduction coincided with the most destructive year for wildfires on record, with more than a million hectares burned across the length and breadth of the EU. 

Austerity 

In response to a campaign by trade unions, the European Commission told member states in March to ensure their fire services are adequately staffed to deal with rising climate threats.

But some of the significant staff reductions came in countries which the Commission itself put under an ‘Excessive Deficit Procedure’ in 2024. For example, Poland lost 9,000 firefighters and France lost 4,100.  

That is why the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) is calling for a revision of the EU’s economic governance rules to ensure all member states can invest in vital public services and their staff. 

ETUC General Secretary Esther Lynch said: 

“You could not design a more reckless policy if you tried: sending Europe’s fire services into its most dangerous wildfire season ever with 18,000 fewer firefighters. 

“This is austerity setting fire to common sense and putting lives, livelihoods and homes at risk. Nothing could demonstrate more clearly just how dangerous and self-defeating the EU’s economic rules are. 

“Failing to properly staff our fire services, which carry out crucial prevention work as well as tackling blazes when they occur, is a false economy at a time when the economic cost of wildfires is running into the billions.

“Europe is massively increasing spending on defence but letting our guard down against the most imminent and serious risk to people’s safety. We need a consistent approach to all of the challenges we are facing and that requires investment in our public services and their workforce.”


Jan Willem Goudriaan, General Secretary of the European Public Service Union, said: 

“The public services emergency is repeatedly showing us its dangers, yet the Commission is fiddling while Rome burns. 

“Wildfire seasons are becoming longer and more severe, while the number of firefighters is declining. 

“The Commission’s focus on deregulation and competitiveness does nothing to address people’s concerns nor does it strengthen preparedness. 

“We need to end austerity, focus on climate change and just transition – invest in firefighting and emergency services, hire more staff and protect the workers who protect us.”

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Wildfires Reveal the Risks of a Net Zero Electricity Grid as Climate Activists and Politicians Exploit Wildfire Tragedies says Friends of Science Society

Canada plans to spend $1 trillion on building out an east-west ‘clean energy’ power grid as part of its net zero climate plan, but Friends of Science Society says, while additional power generation is needed, net zero should not be the rationale, in this new video “Change Climate Change: Stop Net Zero Nonsense.” 

Canadian physicist, William van Wijngaarden, in a presentation for the International Climate Science Coalition shows there is no human-made climate crisis, thus no need for net zero targets. Wijngaarden says net zero goals will cause serious damage to society.

Part of that damage is the convoluted effort to “electrify everything” using so-called “clean energy.”

Footage of evacuees trying to navigate downed power lines in British Columbia show why “electrify now” and “electrify everything” to reach Net Zero climate targets is a bad idea, says Friends of Science Society. As reported by CBC on July 30, 2026, dozens of power poles, transmission lines, lines and transformers are down; large sections of British Columbia lost electrical power, as is happening in other wildfire locations. Without conventional ICE vehicles, people in a net zero EV world would be stranded.

As tragic wildfires rip through British Columbia, Ontario, Spokane, Oregon, and Europe, climate activist journos like some at Associated Press and Grist, and politicians like former Washington governor, Jay Inslee, wrongly exploit these tragedies, by conflating wildfire and human-caused climate change, says Friends of Science Society. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as explained in plain language by Roger Pielke, Jr., “The IPCC has not detected or attributed fire occurrence or area burned to human-caused climate change.”

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Online News Act left rural Canadians without credible information during wildfires: report

The report, first detailed by Blacklock’s Reporter, examined the consequences of Meta’s decision to block Canadian news from Facebook and Instagram following Parliament’s passage of Bill C-18.

The legislation was designed to compel large digital platforms to compensate Canadian publishers for news content. Meta responded by blocking news content from its platforms in Canada.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia said the consequences were particularly serious in rural communities, where Facebook had become a major source of local information during emergencies.

“Rural B.C. communities lost access to credible journalism at the precise moment they needed it most,” researchers wrote, citing consequences for public safety, trust and compliance with emergency instructions.

The study, “When Good Intentions Cause Harm: The Online News Act, Meta’s News Ban And Public Safety During Wildfire Emergencies,” examined wildfire coverage in several B.C. communities.

Researchers said removing journalism from Facebook did not eliminate information about the fires. Instead, personal accounts and emotionally charged material remained and were amplified on the platform, contributing to community outrage and conspiracy theories.

The report blamed the problem on a combination of declining institutional trust, social media algorithms and the disappearance of credible journalism from Facebook.

Researchers also criticized mainstream news coverage, saying the absence of local reporters with established community relationships made newsrooms increasingly dependent on governments and other “official voices.”

“Media were producing a version of wildfire events in which affected communities were compliance problems rather than people in crisis,” the report said.

The researchers noted an irony at the centre of the controversy: declining local journalism was partly caused by the advertising-market changes Bill C-18 was supposed to address, but the legislation ultimately contributed to credible journalism disappearing from one of the platforms rural Canadians relied upon most.

Blacklock’s was among the independent Canadian outlets that opposed the Online News Act, arguing it amounted to federal interference in the news marketplace. The outlet says it neither sought nor accepted payments available under the legislation.

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Arson Suspect Identified and Arrested in Spokane Wildfires that Torched Hundreds of Homes – Man Previously Gunned Down HIS OWN FATHER

A ‘climate change’ narrative pushed by the left following the latest wildfires affecting the United States has imploded following news that an arson suspect has been arrested. And his past is absolutely harrowing.

As The Gateway Pundit reported yesterday, The Old Trails Fire in Spokane County, Washington, ignited on Saturday across parts of Spokane, Washington.

The fires rapidly expanded under strong winds, prompting widespread Level 3 “Go Now” evacuations that forced 64,000 residents to flee their homes.

By evening, multiple homes had been burned, with videos posted to social media showing the devastation. 700 homes in total burned to the ground.

Early coverage, including CNN’s live updates, used “climate crisis” language, and the Associated Press described the fires as erupting “across a parched landscape” amid severe drought and low snowpack.

Climate activists and social media accounts ran with the climate crisis narrative.

But in news that should shock absolutely no one, the corporate media got it all wrong. On August 3, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office arrested a 37-year-old man named Aaron F. Farinacci on suspicion of first-degree arson.

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The Latest Wildfire Panic is Refuted by Data

Wildfires are in the news. With a hot, dry summer it was bound to happen. And, naturally, this is bringing with it talk of climate change.

The Independent is screaming and rending its garments:

Europe is on fire – will the continent’s climate change deniers finally wake up?

The Guardian has an opinion piece calling for prosecutions for climate crimes. Twitter experts are calling for changes to the way we live our lives.

Prince William is saying stuff:

Wildfires ‘stark reminder’ of extreme climate challenge, says William

I suppose we should make the usual point, that wildfires are a natural phenomenon that are an important part of the life cycle of many ecosystems. And that some years are bound to be worse than others.

But there’s just one issue, wildfire activity is actually down.

A new study from the University of East Anglia, published in May, found that 2025 was 16% below the average in terms of burnt area, and that’s despite policies known to increase both the chance of wildfires starting and the area they will burn.

But that was last year, this year must be different given the coverage, right?

Wrong.

Data from the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service shows that, to the end of June, this year had substantially lower wildfire activity – across every continent – than any year since they began collecting data in 2003.

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Flashback: The Amazon Wildfire Crisis That Never Was

Given the current hysteria about wildfires on the continent – hysteria which is refuted by data – we thought this would be a good time to remind everyone they’ve done this exact thing before.

It’s the summer of 2019, the Amazon’s regular wildfire season is underway, and for some reason it’s all anyone is talking about.

“The Earth’s lungs are on fire!”, that’s the line. Everyone from Obama down is lamenting the damage and wishing we’d done more about climate change sooner.

Full on South Park “we didn’t listen!” mode.

Just one problem – It was actually a below average year for forest fires in the Amazon, at least according to NASA data.

And the conversation was being muddied by people sharing misattributed photographs, and contrived or misleading statistics.

But when rational people point this out to try and calm the growing hysteria, they are shouted down and called names.

…and then the NASA data was changed to cover up the discrepancy.

It’s an interesting little time capsule, and microcosm of the model that would take hold of the entire world when Covid landed just six months later.

And it’s exactly what they’re doing right now in Europe.

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Nine in Ten ‘Wildfires’ Started by Human Hands, French Government Admits

The French government has revealed that an estimated ninety per cent of so-called wildfires are the result of human activity, undermining the persistent media narrative that climate change is driving spontaneous fires ravaging the countryside.

On Tuesday, French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said that 184 people have been arrested in connection with wildfires since the beginning of the summer. Those arrested are a combination of arsonists, criminals, and careless individuals, he said.

According to the French Forest Observatory, around one in three (30 per cent) of wildfires are believed to have been set maliciously, Le Figaro reported.

In total, the Ministry of the Interior estimated that nine in ten wildfires in France were started by humans. The Place Beauvau said that since June, five people have been imprisoned and a further 15 have been placed in detention pending a trial.

A conviction for starting a fire can come with serious consequences, particularly if the fire resulted in deaths. Following a strengthening of the laws surrounding the issue in 2004 in the wake of a deadly heatwave.

People found to have been negligent can face up to two years in prison, while those who deliberately set fires face up to ten years in prison, though a life sentence is possible if the fires kill.

The wildfires in France have forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate their homes, with over 115,000 hectares of forest destroyed by the flames.

Yet, rather than addressing the persistent issue of arson and negligent accidents, the Western legacy media has heavily focussed on climate change driving blazes, with direct human action downplayed.

This is despite European governments having long recognised that so-called wildfires across the continent are typically the result of human activity.

Indeed, during the summer of 2023, when Greece faced hundreds of fires, Athens’ Climate Change Minister Vassilis Kikilias acknowledged that the majority of the fires “were caused by human hand” and that the people behind them were guilty of “arson either by criminal negligence or by intention”.

That same summer, the regional president of the Spanish Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, admitted that wildfires that forced over thousands of tourists to evacuate had been a result of arson.

In response to the prevalence of pyromaniacs, some governments have been forced to get creative with their attempts to stop arson, including the use of police drones in Italy to patrol the countryside for prospective arsonists.

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LAUGHABLE: Gavin Newsom Claims That When it Comes to Fire Management, California is a ‘Model for the Globe’

Sometimes, you may forget how utterly shameless Gavivin Newsom is and then he says something like this and it all comes rushing back.

The governor recently bragged, with a straight face, that California is a model for the globe on fire management and that people from all over the world look at what California is doing and try to imitate it.

During the wildfires at the end of 2024, there wasn’t even any water in the reservoirs to fight the flames. And yet, he’s bragging. It’s just amazing.

Townhall reports:

You have to admit that what Gavin Newsom lacks in brains and sound policy he makes up for in sheer hubris. That’s the only reason that Newsom could say with a straight face that his state is a global model for fire management. Perhaps that’s true in a sense; Canada was burning so much that people as far south as Virginia were seeing, smelling, and feeling the impacts.

That’s because Canada, like California, refuses to do basic fire management like clearing brush and old growth. This is nothing to brag about, of course.

But brag Newsom did.

“I can say this with absolute conviction. We don’t imitate; we’re a model for others,” Newsom said. “We have people coming from all over the United States and around the globe to look at what California is doing in orbit, in the air, and on the ground.”

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Canada: Indigenous Leaders Say Politicians Ignored Them as Communities Burned

Fast-moving wildfires in Ontario, Canada, destroyed an entire indigenous community this week whose leaders said politicians delayed evacuation orders, failed to help find lodging for the displaced, and ignored calls for help as the flames engulfed them.

Ontario formally requested federal assistance this week as dozens of wildfires threatened northern communities, some of which had already begun evacuating themselves or fleeing by boat. Canada does not have a federal emergency management agency or a federal fire authority, however, rendering its national government largely unable to address the country’s annual massive wildfires.

In a letter to federal Emergency Management and Community Resilience Minister Eleanor Olszewski, Dunlop said 15 communities were evacuating or considering evacuations. She warned that simultaneous air evacuations could exceed Ontario’s available aircraft and requested a federal response within 24 hours instead of the usual 48.

Federal officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail reported.

The request came after a fast-moving blaze devastated Namaygoosisagagun First Nation, also known as Collins First Nation, north of Thunder Bay. Chief Helen Paavola said residents escaped in small boats while watching flames swallow trees beside their homes. Some fled wearing only the clothes on their backs.

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“Sanctions, Asset Freezes, Visa Bans, Tariffs”: GOP Senator Readies Bill Against Canada Over Toxic Wildfire Smoke

GOP Sen. Prepares Sanctions Bill On Lefties in Canada  

Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) appeared on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle, hosted by Laura Ingraham, on Friday and provided new color about his bill to sanction Canada over the toxic wildfire smoke that has created an environmental disaster across parts of the U.S.

“We’re going to put sanctions on them, hold their assets, make sure they don’t have visas, and impose tariffs because we have to ensure that the people suffering are compensated,” Moreno told Ingraham.

Moreno continued, “This is an abject, avoidable disaster. And the left, who by the way, talks about climate change every single day, this is the worst environmental disaster you could ever imagine!”

“This is totally avoidable. And it’s not due to climate change. It’s due to leadership change in Canada that’s caused this problem,” he added. 

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