Three villages southwest of Berlin have been evacuated as a wildfire the size of 400 soccer fields spread yesterday.
More than 500 people had to leave their homes as a result of the fire in Treuenbrietzen, about 50km outside of Berlin.
“Our main goal is to protect the evacuated villages from the flames,” local lawmaker Christian Stein told the German news agency dpa.
Photo: AFP
“We haven’t been able to push back the fire, but none of the buildings have been damaged,” Stein said.
Police said that their plans to extinguish the flames have been complicated by old ammunition from World War II, that was still buried in the forests and which could explode due to the fires.
Stein said there had already been several detonations and that firefighters were not allowed to enter suspicious areas.
Instead, authorities were trying to douse the flames in those areas with firefighting helicopters.
The fire started on Thursday afternoon and spread quickly through the dry pine forests. By the evening, authorities had evacuated the villages of Frohnsdorf, Klausdorf and Tiefenbrunnen.
“Something like that, we didn’t even experience during the war,” 76-year-old Anita Biedermann told dpa as police told her to grab her jacket, ID and important medication from her home before taking her to a nearby gym for the night.
Overnight, winds blew the smoke to Berlin, where people in some neighborhoods were asked to keep their windows closed. Berlin emergency services received calls from concerned residents.
Hundreds of firefighters were on the ground in Treuenbrietzen trying to cut trees to make long swaths in the forests to prevent the fire from spreading further. They were also fighting the flames with helicopters and water cannons.
Germany has seen a long, hot summer with almost no rain and large parts of the country are on high alert regarding possible wildfires.
Raimund Engel, who is in charge of forests in the state of Brandeburg where Treuenbrietzen is, said 400 wildfires have already been reported this year.
“I hope the weather will play along and the winds won’t increase again,” Stein said. “We are yearning for rain.”
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion