Europe’s wildfires have raised the danger posed by unexploded WWII bombs

This summer's European wildfires are uncovering a hidden danger: buried explosives from decades past. When a wildfire tore through southwestern France's Gironde region, burning forty-two thousand hectares, it exposed a cache of second world war shells buried beneath the forest floor. At least seventy-five were recovered from the scorched earth, and several detonated during the fire itself—one projectile punched through the wall of an evacuated house. The Conversation reports similar hazards emerging across Europe: in northeastern Germany, the Müritz National Park's cold war-era contamination required bomb disposal teams to work alongside firefighters rather than battle the blaze directly. The mechanism is straightforward: normally buried ordnance stays stable, but sustained heat from wildfires—especially when flames burrow into deep peat and smolder for prolonged periods—can ignite or detonate buried shells. This happened repeatedly during North Yorkshire's Langdale Moor fire in twenty twenty-five, which detonated more than twenty buried second world war shells over six weeks. Europe is heavily contaminated with explosive remnants from two world wars and cold war military training, and as climate change drives more frequent, intense wildfires across the continent, that buried problem is becoming an active operational hazard.

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