AFP

Firefighters made progress battling California’s largest wildfire of the summer on Tuesday, with more than one-quarter of the blaze near Yosemite National Park contained.

The Oak Fire in central California broke out on Friday and spread rapidly, destroying 41 buildings and forcing thousands to evacuate.

By Tuesday, nearly 3,000 firefighters and 24 helicopters at the scene had achieved some success containing the blaze, aided by slightly higher humidity levels, which are forecasted to increase further in the coming days.

Jonathan Pierce, a California fire department spokesman, told AFP that efforts to curtail the spread of the blaze could soon be aided as it approaches areas already ravaged by wildfires from recent years.

“If this fire hits the Ferguson fire scar, it will slow down a little bit because there is less fuel there,” he said.

“That fire was as recent as 2018, so all the vegetation that has come back will be more thin than a lot of the vegetation that has not been burnt.”

So far, the Oak Fire has burnt 18,000 acres — the largest by area this year, but relatively minor compared to the mega-blazes that have engulfed hundreds of thousands of acres in recent years.

Its spread has been driven by an abundance of combustible fuel following years of drought and hot, dry weather conditions.

California Governor Gavin Newsom on Saturday declared a “state of emergency” in Mariposa County, citing “conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property.”

The Oak Fire is burning just a few miles from the smaller Washburn Fire, which briefly threatened Yosemite’s rare giant sequoia trees earlier this month. 

In recent years, California and other parts of the western United States have been ravaged by huge and fast-moving wildfires, driven by a warming climate.

The fire comes as the usually cooler Pacific Northwest is in the grip of extreme temperatures, forecast to top 100 degrees F (38C) in parts of Oregon.

Parts of the South-Central United States including Texas are also experiencing sweltering heatwaves.

But the Southwest is seeing monsoonal moisture, bringing heavy showers and thunderstorms to parts of the region, including sections of Arizona and Utah. 

Moscow said on Tuesday it was leaving the International Space Station “after 2024”, amid tensions with the West, in a move analysts warned could lead to a halt to Russian manned flights.

The confirmation of the long-mooted move comes as ties unravel between the Kremlin and the West over Moscow’s military intervention in Ukraine and several rounds of devastating sanctions against Russia, including its space sector.

Space experts said Russia’s departure from the International Space Station would seriously affect the country’s space sector and deal a major blow to its programme of manned flights, a major source of Russian pride.

“Of course, we will fulfil all our obligations to our partners, but the decision to leave this station after 2024 has been made,” Yury Borisov, the new head of Russian space agency Roscosmos, told President Vladimir Putin, according to a Kremlin account of their meeting.

“I think that by this time we will start putting together a Russian orbital station,” Borisov added, calling it the domestic space programme’s main “priority”.

“Good,” Putin replied.

The ISS is due to be retired after 2024, although US space agency NASA says it can remain operational until 2030.

The ISS was launched in 1998 at a time of hope for US-Russia cooperation following their Space Race competition during the Cold War.

Washington has not received “any official word” from Russia yet, said Robyn Gatens, director of the ISS for NASA.

Asked whether she wanted the US-Russia space relationship to end, she replied: “No, absolutely not.”

Until now, space exploration has been one of the few areas where cooperation between Russia and the United States and its allies had not been wrecked by tensions over Ukraine and elsewhere.

– ‘Like an old woman’s flat’-

Russia is heavily reliant on imports of everything from manufacturing equipment to consumer goods, and the effects of Western sanctions are expected to wreak havoc on the country’s economy in the long term.

Space expert Vadim Lukashevich said space science cannot flourish in a heavily sanctioned country.

“If the ISS ceases to exist in 2024, we will have nowhere to fly,” Lukashevich told AFP. “At stake is the very preservation of manned flights in Russia, the birthplace of cosmonautics.”

Pointing to Russia’s growing scientific and technological isolation, Lukashevich said the authorities could not plan more than several months in advance and added that even if Russia builds an orbiting station, it would be a throwback to the 1980s.

“It will be archaic, like an old woman’s flat, with a push-button telephone and a record-player,” he said.

Space analyst Vitaly Yegorov struck a similar note, saying it was next to impossible to build a new orbiting station from scratch in a few years.

“Neither in 2024, nor in 2025, nor in 2026 will there be a Russian orbital station,” Yegorov told AFP.

He added that creating a fully-fledged space station would take at least a decade of “the most generous funding”.

Yegorov said Russia’s departure from the ISS meant Moscow might have to put on ice its programme of manned flights “for several years” or even “indefinitely”.

The move could also see Russia abandon its chief spaceport, Baikonur, which it is renting from Kazakhstan, Yegorov said.

Russian Soyuz rockets were the only way to reach the International Space Station until SpaceX, run by the billionaire Elon Musk, debuted a capsule in 2020.

– ‘Difficult to restore’ –

The Soviet space programme can boast of a number of key accomplishments, including sending the first man into space in 1961 and launching the first satellite four years earlier. These feats remain a major source of national pride in Russia.

But experts say Roscosmos is now a shadow of its former self and has in recent years suffered a series of setbacks, including corruption scandals and the loss of a number of satellites and other spacecraft.

Borisov, appointed in mid-July, replaced Dmitry Rogozin, a firebrand politician known for his bombastic statements.

Rogozin had previously warned that without cooperation from Moscow, the ISS could de-orbit and fall on US or European territory.

In a possible sign of disagreement with Borisov, Vladimir Solovyov, chief designer at spacecraft manufacturer Energia, said Russia should not rush to quit the ISS.

“If we halt manned flights for several years, then it will be very difficult to restore what has been achieved,” he was quoted as telling the Russky Cosmos magazine.

From farmers to fishermen, boat owners to ordinary households, communities across France are struggling with a severe drought that has seen an unprecedented number of regions affected by water restrictions this summer.

Like much of western Europe, the country is going through a punishing hot season of record temperatures and forest fires that have led to renewed focus on climate change.

After the third-driest spring on record and drought-like conditions since, rivers and reservoirs are running low nationwide, leading to increasingly severe water restrictions.

“We have a record number of departments with restrictions,” the environment ministry said in a statement, saying that 90 of the 96 administrative regions known as departments were affected.

The most severe water-saving measures — including a ban on irrigation for farmland — are in place in the northwest in the Loire river basin, as well as the southeast around the Rhone.

Areas in the southwest around the Tarn and Lot rivers are also in the highest red category used by the government’s drought website Propluvia.

Since the start of the year, 151 days out of 204 have had an average temperature above the long-term average, a record since 1947, according to the national weather service Meteo France.

– Consequences –

From the normally verdant Alps to the most famous wine-growing areas in Bourgogne and Bordeaux, the consequences of months of almost rain-free weather are being felt.

In the Franche-Comte area in eastern France, water shortages have become so severe that several villages in the Doubs area are now dependent on water trucks delivering supplies.

The problem is felt acutely by the local dairy farmers whose cows need more than 100 litres of water a day.

“The price of water has double or even tripled compared to a few years ago,” local farmer Aurelie Binet told France 3 television. “As farmers, whatever happens, we use large amounts of water.” 

The picturesque southern village of Saintes-Marie-de-la-Mer near the mouth of the Rhone on the Mediterranean coast is also struggling to draw drinking water from its usual sources.

“It hasn’t rained for eight months and as the Rhone is very low, salt water is flowing up to 20 kilometres (12 miles) inland,” mayor Christelle Aillet told AFP. “We’ve got a problem with the water and of volumes.”

On the Rhine river, commercial canal boats are having to run at a third of their carrying capacity in order to avoid hitting the bottom because the water level is so low.

Even in the far north in the Calais region, which is reliably cooler and wetter than most parts of France, farmers are worried about parched grasslands that are not providing for their animals.

“Some colleagues are saying it’s worse than in 1976 (a record drought year),” Jean-Pierre Clipet from the FDSEA farmers’ union told AFP. “They don’t know how their going to feed their animals this winter.”

– Fishing off limits – 

In red-zone drought areas with the most severe water restrictions, washing cars and watering gardens is prohibited, while golf courses are also unable to keep their fairways green.

Low river levels also mean fishing is restricted, while rescue operations are being carried out for species stranded in some waterways, including around Belfort in eastern France.

Eric Vincent, a fishing guide who takes clients in the Alsace region and the Vosges in the east, told AFP he had had to cancel clients last week.

“The fisherman knows about the condition of the river and knows when to stop,” said the 55-year-old. “I’m not going to be able to accompany clients this summer. It wasn’t like this 10-15 years ago.”  

In the famed vineyards of Bourgogne meanwhile, wine makers expect this year’s harvest to be small and early, perhaps beating the 2020 record when grape pickers began their work in August. 

– Forest fires –

France has endured two severe heatwaves in May and latterly in July — when temperatures soared above 40 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit).

Two huge blazes near Bordeaux in southwest France over the last fortnight have destroyed more than 20,000 hectares (49,000 acres) of tinder-dry forest and required around 2,000 firefighters to bring them under control.

Local authorities are restricting access to many wooded areas as a precaution, including the Calanques National Park along the Mediterranean coast near Marseille which is popular with tourists.

Experts say more severe hot periods and water shortages will become more common as global warming linked to greenhouse gas emissions takes a toll on the planet. 

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