Wildfires Detonate Buried WWII Bombs in Four Countries

Sarah Njeri, a peace and conflict scholar at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, said the continent's "climatic luck" is running out. Steady temperatures and predictable rainfall once kept most buried weapons dormant.

"Climate change is now doing the work of unburying and reactivating what was previously stable," Njeri said. Fires can ignite old munitions and also burn away the scrub that hides them.

Gov. Jamar said no fire crews were in danger and that emergency services were adapting to account for munitions buried in the fire area. Local media published photos of a firefighter handling a rusted bomb.

Jonas Tepe, a spokesman for the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, said unexploded ordnance is more dangerous around wildfires because heat can trigger the explosives.

Collard, who is authorized to scan the old battlefields with a metal detector, has turned up mortar shells, machine guns, helmets, cigarette cases and once a human skeleton. "When you go into a forest like this, you are not sure where the explosives are," he said. "It's part of our history. We live with it."

Christina Greene, a University of Arizona researcher who co-wrote an article with Njeri on the wildfire and ordnance risk, said "the legacy of war keeps creeping up" because of climate change. "It's reliving the legacies of war and conflict in a way that we haven't had to deal with in a while in certain places."