‘It’s only going to get worse’: wildfires forcing firefighters to make impossible choices

# ‘It’s only going to get worse’: wildfires forcing firefighters to make impossible choices

**By the LOPINUZE Environment Desk**

As the climate crisis accelerates the frequency and intensity of wildfires across the globe, firefighting agencies are being forced into agonizing triage decisions, rationing scarce resources and choosing which blazes to fight and which to let burn. In Spain’s Alicante province, veteran firefighter César Alcaraz, who survived a near-fatal ambush by a fast-moving blaze in the late 1990s, now sees his role as akin to “a doctor in an emergency room with too few ventilators.”

The scale of the challenge is staggering. According to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), wildfires in the European Union burned more than 900,000 hectares in 2023—an area roughly the size of Corsica—with 2024 and 2025 tracking to surpass that record. Globally, the number of “extreme wildfire events” has increased by 300% over the past 20 years, according to a 2024 report from the UN Environment Programme. Fire seasons now last an average of 50 days longer than in the 1970s, spreading to regions previously considered low-risk, including Scandinavia, the UK, and parts of the Amazon rainforest.

“When I started, you could count on a single wildfire season from June to September. Now we’re mobilizing in March and still fighting in November,” said Alcaraz, now an officer with Alicante’s provincial fire service. “The fire doesn’t ask for permission. It just comes faster, hotter, and with more fury. We are making impossible choices every single shift.”

‘Every fire is a test of nerve’

The triage model is becoming standard practice. In California, where 7,490 wildfires burned over 324,000 acres in 2024 alone, the state’s Cal Fire agency has adopted a “strategic fire management” protocol that prioritizes protecting human life and critical infrastructure over saving timber or remote structures. In Greece, where wildfires killed 104 people in 2018 and forced mass evacuations in 2023, firefighters now use a color-coded system to allocate resources: red for immediate life threat, orange for high-value assets, yellow for observe-and-monitor.

“It’s not a decision we take lightly,” said Dr. Ana Martínez, a wildfire researcher at the University of Barcelona and former advisor to the Spanish Ministry of Ecological Transition. “When you have five fires burning simultaneously and only three helicopters available, someone is going to lose. The science is clear: as global temperatures rise by even 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the burn window expands by 30%. We’re already there.”

The human cost of resource rationing

Alcaraz recalls his first major fire in the Montgó mountain region, when he and his colleagues ran out of water and barely escaped with their lives. “Back then, I blamed the commanders. I thought, why didn’t they send more trucks? Why didn’t they warn us?” he said. “Now I understand. They had 10 fires that day, and only enough water for four. They had to guess which ones would kill people and which ones would just burn trees.”

The global firefighting workforce is under immense strain. The International Association of Firefighters reports that 58% of wildland firefighters in the US have considered leaving the profession due to burnout, while in Australia, the average tenure of a volunteer firefighter has dropped from 12 years to 6 years since 2010. Spain has lost 15% of its wildfire personnel since 2019, even as the number of annual ignitions rose by 22%.

Forward-looking analysis

Experts warn the crisis is only deepening. Climate models project that by 2050, the global area burned annually could increase by 50% under a high-emissions scenario, with fire-prone regions expanding into northern Europe, Canada, and southern South America. Investment in firefighting capacity has not kept pace: global spending on wildfire suppression has risen by 350% since 2000, yet the share of national budgets dedicated to prevention remains below 10% in most countries.

“We can’t keep deploying more firefighters and more planes and expect to solve this,” said Martínez. “We need to fundamentally rethink land management, stop building in fire-prone zones, and accept that some fires will burn. If we don’t, it’s only going to get worse.”

For Alcaraz, the lesson is personal. “Every fire I go to now, I ask myself: Is this the one where I have to make the call? The answer is always yes.”

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*For more on this story, visit the LOPINUZE Environment Desk or read the original report on our World News page.*