Old ammunition turns Brandenburg’s forests into a powder keg. Armored fire engines are the only ones allowed to drive on them.

Johann Goldammer is stunned. “Those responsible had more luck than sense,” says the head of the Global Fire Monitoring Center and the Fire Ecology working group at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the University of Freiburg im Breisgau. If it hadn’t rained extensively in Brandenburg on Monday, the flames would probably still be blazing near Treuenbrietzen and Beelitz.