Dutch firefighters are helping Spanish colleagues this summer to combat wildfires. They are also learning techniques that they can use at home due to climate change. With 695 Dutch wildfire reports, 2025 is already another busy year.
Twenty firefighters will travel to Galicia, in northern Spain, on Thursday. There, they will relieve the twenty colleagues who have been fighting the fire for the past few weeks. It concerns a European assistance mission. EU member states support other member states where many wildfires occur.
Last week, the Dutch helped with the largest fire of the year in the area, says coordinator Edwin Kok, who is partly present at the mission in Spain. Several fires are still raging in the area this week.
It has been dry for a long time in the province of Ourense, where the Dutch are active. “The spring was very wet. As a result, grasses and small shrubs could grow in abundance,” says Kok. “These are now dried out.” That is an ideal breeding ground for wildfires.
The fires in Spain are of a very different caliber than what the firefighters in the Netherlands are used to. Although that is changing. The year 2022 was an “eye-opener,” says Kok. Then there were several large wildfires at the same time. “It was impossible to fight them properly with the resources we have now.” This year, Kok saw a wildfire in Ede that covered 200 meters in two minutes, “unusually fast for Dutch standards.”
Fighting the fire with shovels and hand tools
In Spain, firefighters learn what you can do in such cases. They are emphatically looking at alternatives to extinguishing with water. “Because that is not always very effective,” says Kok. He saw that with that impressive fire in Ede in April. It was so hot that extinguishing with water no longer made a big difference.
In such a scenario, they remove as much ‘fuel’ as possible in Spain. That is the vegetation that feeds the fire, such as shrubs and trees. The Dutch team also started working with shovels and hand tools in Galicia last week to clear pieces of land. Furthermore, the Spanish fire brigade sometimes deliberately sets fire to pieces of nature, with the aim of burning away vegetation before it can join the large fire.
There is a good chance that this experience will come in handy more often in our own country in the future. Research by the KNMI shows that the risk of wildfires in the Netherlands has increased since the 1960s. Dry periods since 2017 in particular stand out. Those periods coincide with several major wildfires.
Fingerprints of climate change clearly present
Figures on actual fires are more difficult to interpret. The Netherlands Institute for Public Safety (NIPV) has been keeping track of the figures since 2023. Of those three years, 2025 is already the year with the most reports. It is not yet known how many of these were fires.
Before 2023, the figures on wildfires were not properly kept. Nevertheless, Kok dares to state that 2025 is one of the “busy years” for the fire brigade, even if you look back further. In years with many wildfires, there were usually around 750 to 1,000 reports. In any case, 2025 will fall within that margin.
Although the NIPV finds it difficult to link specific wildfires or weather situations to climate change, the trend seems clear. “We see that April and May in particular have become drier in recent decades,” writes the KNMI. And with prolonged drought, the fire brigade simply receives more calls, says coordinator Jelmer Dam of the NIPV.
Waiting hours for a fire-fighting helicopter
Dam acknowledges that climate change is forcing the Dutch fire brigade to adapt. According to him, our country still has some catching up to do, especially in terms of equipment.
New vehicles are needed that are more suitable for off-road driving, as well as other types of hoses and nozzles. Dam also hopes that there will be faster air support in the future. Now we have to wait for helicopters from Defense, which sometimes take hours. “While you would want that support within twenty minutes.”
We can also learn something from the Spanish in that area. The control services all use a centralized app, in which they can upload live photos and videos. “This gives you a very good view of the nature of a fire,” says Kok. If fire-fighting planes or helicopters are needed, they can immediately take to the air. The Spanish have also kept detailed records of all data for the past fifteen years. As a result, they can now make accurate predictions.
Incidentally, the Spanish may also be able to learn something from us when it comes to adapting to a changing climate. “We are a water country, and very used to floods,” says Dam. “That suits us well”. With the National Rescue Fleet, there is a centralized system for problems with water. In addition to wildfires, Spain has also faced floods, such as the deadly floods in Valencia last year.