Emergency services are currently fighting a forest fire in Sauerland. With the current high temperatures, the risk of forest fires is high. A map shows where there are particularly high risks.

Heat and parched soil: Fires are currently breaking out again and again in forests in Germany. In the vicinity of Sundern in the Sauerland, extinguishing work continued on Wednesday, one day after a forest fire broke out. There are always embers, as a police spokesman announced. Around 400 emergency services were already on site. The fire broke out in a mixed forest on Tuesday morning. In total, an area of ​​more than 30,000 square meters burned, it said. That’s roughly the size of four soccer fields. It was initially unclear how the fire started.

Forest fire near Berlin has now been extinguished

A forest fire that broke out north of Berlin was extinguished on Wednesday morning. Shortly after Oranienburg on the B96 in Nassenheide, around 6000 square meters of forest had caught fire during the night, said a spokesman for the regional control center. The fire was then extinguished around 8 a.m. The fire brigade has since lifted a hazard warning due to heavy smoke development.

The map shows the current forecast. With a click you get to the provider “Wetter.de.

The topic of forest fires – previously known more from southern European countries – is now also being debated in Germany. The German Fire Brigade Association (DFV) complains that the procedure in Germany for requesting fire-fighting helicopters in forest fire disasters is far too bureaucratic and complicated. “Each country has its own regulations, sometimes even different ones for the different carriers of the aircraft,” said the chairman of the forest fire working group in the DFV, Ulrich Cimolino, the editorial network Germany (RND) on Wednesday. There are 16 different regulations for 16 federal states and occasionally even different regulations for the armed forces and federal police.

It takes far too long to request helicopters from them, criticized Cimolino, who is also the vegetation fire expert at the Association for the Promotion of German Fire Protection. This makes it extremely difficult to coordinate important details. It was the same with the flood disaster in the Ahr Valley a year ago. At that time, helicopters were sometimes not used at all, not on time or incorrectly equipped.

Another hot day on Wednesday – then a bit of cooling down regionally

Germany is also facing a very hot day on Wednesday – according to the forecast by the German Weather Service (DWD), it should only cool down again afterwards. On Wednesday, the extremely high temperatures of up to 40 degrees will first say goodbye to the western half of the country and move to the rest of the republic. According to the DWD, 34 to 40 degrees are expected in the eastern half.

The scorching heat over Europe was also felt in Germany on Tuesday, with temperatures often well above 35 degrees. In the west, the DWD even considered temperatures of over 40 degrees possible – in the evening Duisburg (Duisburg-Baerl station) turned out to be the warmest place with 39.5 degrees. This also made Tuesday the hottest day of the year so far. A month ago (June 19), 39.2 degrees were measured in Cottbus and Dresden. The annual heat record for Germany was not broken in 2022: It is 41.2 degrees – measured on July 25, 2019 in Duisburg and Tönisvorst on the Lower Rhine near Krefeld.

The World Weather Organization (WMO) in Geneva is convinced that heat waves like the ones in Europe now will be normal in the summer months. “Such episodes are becoming more frequent and the negative trend will continue until at least 2060, regardless of the success of our climate protection efforts,” said WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas on Tuesday. It could also get hotter in Europe.